Labyrinth: Kingdom Come
by Ellen Weaver
Summary: "King gone!" cried the littlest goblin. "What do you mean, 'King gone?" Sarah demanded. The Goblin King has abandoned his throne and disappeared into the Labyrinth. It's up to Sarah Williams to find him and bring him home. It will be a hard task: the way forward is sometimes the way back. And the Goblin King is tricky, and has plans of his own...
1. The Threshold

**The Threshold**

* * *

Sarah Williams liked puzzles; she solved them for a living.

Hollywood was a place of a million pieces that always needed putting together. There were so many beautiful people, beautiful pictures, beautiful ideas, but sometimes they wouldn't come together correctly. And when that was in danger of happening, and if people were very lucky, they called on Sarah Williams.

She had certain rules.

She didn't like visual effects. She considered them cheating. And the finished product never looked as good, as real as it needed to, if the actors were interacting with green screens instead of the real thing. You could waste all the money you wanted to on computer graphics, but if the actors couldn't see it, feel it, touch it, then it didn't matter. It looked fake; the dream would break, and the audience would know they'd been cheated. Anyway, not that it mattered at this point in her career; she wasn't operating at a level quite yet where there was much of any money to blow whether the director wanted to (always yes) or not. So Sarah would come in and look at the set and the script, and have four hours to find a solution to the puzzle. How does one create a car-crash scene without wrecking any cars? How does one shoot a piece of fight choreography without using trained stunt performers? Things like that.

Sometimes, when Sarah was working, the problems she solved were problems that no one else, other than the director, seemed to notice were problems. She had a knack for actors; not telling them their business or petting their ego, but she could go up to one after friendly introductions and tell them their story. Actors didn't have the advantage of seeing the whole film put together before they did their work; Sarah had a way of summing up the narrative for them, from their character's perspective, that reassured them about how to go about working the scene if they seemed stuck. Small problems, tiny things really. The details that mattered and couldn't be bought for any amount of money, that helped create one flawless picture the way fitting the last piece of a jigsaw did for a puzzle. And Sarah solved puzzles.

Like the one here. Long after she'd rather have been catching up on her sleep, Sarah was pacing inside a dark studio. This scene was supposed to be set in a ruinous medieval castle, and their production designer had done his job well, considering what he had to work with. But they needed a way to create the illusion of additional infinite space beyond, and a canvas painting wouldn't match up exactly, not with increased film speeds. It needed to look as real to the camera as the painted plaster stones. Sarah frowned as she looked around at the limited depth of field space. She threw the lights on and grabbed her camera. She'd go through the set, take high-def pictures of some of the curves and arches of the interior space, and have that fidelity-printed onto fabric.

All the things that could be done, and done well, and done quick and cheap—they weren't impossible puzzles to solve, but they were puzzles that most other people, even Hollywood magicians, didn't even realize were there to solve, or puzzles they didn't want to waste the mental energy to solve. Sarah Williams could do it, though. She'd had valuable experience in that area.

This set reminded her of the Labyrinth, something she hadn't really thought about in years. At least, not the whole of it. The people and the pieces, certainly. The last time she'd needed her friends was her junior year of college, when she had a case of the flu so terrible that she'd barely been able to totter from the bed to the toilet down the hall, much less eat. Hoggle had come, put her back in bed, fed her soup, kept her company. "You're a woman now," he said, touching her hand. "You won't be needing us much anymore. But we're still right here, Sarah." She'd been too weak to cry, but she was fiercely glad that he'd come. She realized now that it was a goodbye.

She sniffed and realized she was crying now. _Stupid. Stupid_. A small hand tapped her shoe and offered her a stained handkerchief. "Thank you," she said, wiping away the tears to get a better look. "Oh. It's you."

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady." A trio of goblins was standing by her feet, huddled close together. "You needed us."

"Well… no, I didn't." Sarah sighed and glanced up as a shadow passed overhead. The studio was crawling with goblins, now, hanging from the set, scurrying on the equipment, and in one disturbing case gnawing the duct tape on a rig. Had she said some right words? Was the Goblin King about to show himself to her after almost two decades? Impossible. "What are you doing here?"

"You needed us," insisted the little goblin, reaching back up for his handkerchief.

"No not needed us," said the taller one behind him, snippy-beaked with bronze horns. "Needed by us."

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady. Needed."

"Oh?" She packed her camera back in her bag. "Why?" She had an ominous feeling with so many goblins around. Ominous, but exciting; something was about to happen.

The goblins shared a secret look before the taller goblin shoved his smaller companion. "King gone," the goblin said, twisting its hands together.

"What do you mean, 'King gone?" Sarah crossed her arms over her chest and gave the goblins a severe look. "Gone how long?"

"Long gone," the goblin replied with a shrug. "King left throne and go. King go. King gone." The other two goblins nodded in unison.

"Now wait a minute," Sarah said, clenching her fists. She looked at the second and third goblin in the representative trio. _Ambassadors? Supplicants?_ "The Goblin King's gone?"

"Yes."

"And what, you didn't notice until just today?"

"We was busy!" insisted the third goblin. He had a forthright but stupid look to him. "We were gonna look for him, but we forgot. Then we forgot we forgot!"

Sarah took a deep breath. So the Goblin King had left his kingdom. She'd imagined telling the Goblin King off many times over the years, and for many things. For the promised dreams that popped like a soap-bubble when they landed in her hand; for trying to seduce her when she was barely more than a child, and for the Cleaners—yes, she'd created and memorized a tirade about attempted murder and was always adding new good bits to it—but of everything, this took the prize. The goblins needed to come to her for help? She'd have to add at least two pages to her speech. "King gone" indeed!

Sarah felt heat rising to her cheeks. Speaking to goblins was like speaking to rather stupid people, frustrating and confusing. "Did he leave a note?"

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady!" The little goblin's face lit up, and Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. But then the little goblin sang a word, and all the other goblins one by one stopped what they were doing with the set and props and leftovers at the craft table, and layered their voices until the entire studio was filled with the song. The word was "I" and the note was in the key of longing pain.

The sound was tragic and unbearable. "Stop," Sarah shouted. They stopped, though the sound echoed off the walls before fading completely away.

Something sad twisted in her. When she'd come home, she'd said she needed all of them. And that had included the Goblin King. There were so many questions she had for him. There were so many things she needed to know. And when she'd gotten a little older, there were sexual longings she'd wanted him to satisfy but, instead had to be content with herself or with the clumsy, self-absorbed attentions of boys her age. He'd never come. He'd never cared. That was a secret speech that hurt so badly she never even tried to put it in words.

When she was confident her voice would not shake, she asked, "So where did he go?"

"He walked away," the taller goblin offered helpfully. "He put on best coat and go."

_Putting on clothes? Walking? The Goblin King on foot?_

"King somewhere in kingdom. King lost, but we don't know where. Are you King now instead?"

"Ladies is not Kings! Ladies is Queens, dummy!" The first goblin kicked the other.

"Stop that!" Sarah snapped, and felt bad when the goblins flinched. But they looked at her a moment from under hooded eyelids and smiled knowing smiles.

"You talk like King. We like you. Keep you instead?"

"No," said Sarah. "Definitely not. "

"We need King," cried the first goblin. "Need him!"

"I'm very sorry about that," Sarah said. _Sorry about the predicament it's put me in._ What should she say to them? _Go home? I don't want to?_ Was that the sort of person she was? She rubbed the bridge of her nose. She looked at the goblins, looking at her with hope and sad longing. _No. I can do this. I miss the Labyrinth. I miss Hoggle and Sir Didymus and Ludo and everything else about that insane, wonderful place—even its missing king. This is what I was meant to do. This is a puzzle. And a true hero never turns down the call to adventure, or checks her calendar first._

She must have waited too long to decide, for the goblins started to pout, big lips sticking out and tears welling up in their eyes. "Stop looking at me that way." She snapped, "I'll come back with you. I'll even try to find the Goblin King for you, and bring him back. I don't promise it's possible, but I'll try."

Sarah rechecked the gear in her go bag. She'd learned that sometimes solving puzzles took all night and took her to strange locations, and was always prepared to spend a night in her car. She pulled her jacket on, flexed her feet in her rubber-soled clogs, and grabbed a few bottles of water from the craft table. _Should I let someone know where I've gone?_ She paused, and then reconsidered. _No. Screw that. Either I'll find __the Goblin King __and he'll re-order time, or not._ _Call to adventure, leap of faith, all that stuff_. She paused and took out her camera, substituted it with a sixth and seventh bottle of water. She considered leaving her phone too, but didn't. There were likely no outlets in the Labyrinth, but she'd want her phone as a talisman against trouble. Maybe she'd even wear it around her neck, an amulet in black. She laughed to herself. "When do we go?" She slung her bag over her shoulder.

"Already here," the goblins insisted, as they moved through the empty set, pushing and pulling her along with them. She went through the blank place where she'd planned to put the photo, and the world tilted.

_Oh no_, she had time to think. She grabbed a sandstone ledge as she felt the floor fall from under her feet. "Help!" she cried out to the goblins, but they cowered in fear in the archways of the familiar and disorienting room. It was the Escher stair room, just where she'd left, and gravity no longer worked the way it should. She clawed at the landing and managed to push one shoulder over the ledge; her feet couldn't find any purchase. The bag on her back was heavy…too heavy. Her hands wouldn't hold! She was going to fall!

* * *

_And we're off!_

_This is the story I've wanted to write for years, but never had the right words. For those with appetites for horror and suspense, allow me to recommend my story "Exile from the Labyrinth: The Lament Configuration." Written as a prequel to Labyrinth, it exists in the same continuity as this story and the film. _

_The usual caveats and provisos apply: you know the drill, Labyrinth fans: the film is copyright to its creators, and this is a work of fanfiction, and an homage. Rated T for language and danger; the rating will change if and when we get to sexytimes with Sarah and the Goblin King. (... duh. What kind of monster would I be to withhold that?)_

_Many thanks to my superb beta, Nyllewell, who has already prevented several headlong grammatical crashes and continuity pileups, and will be helping to make this story as scrumptious and fun as it can possibly be!_

_The beginning of each chapter will include a suggested soundtrack for ambiance and general shenanigans. Cue up or ignore at your whim BUT-the soundtrack will contain clues, themes, and foreshadowing for the story._

* * *

_**Soundtrack for Chapter 1:**_

"Lady Grinning Soul" -David Bowie  
"Within You" -David Bowie  
"So Real" -Jeff Buckley

* * *

_**Next... Chapter 2: "In the Halls of the Goblin King"  
**_


	2. In the Halls of the Goblin King

** In the Halls of the Goblin King  
**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter 2  
**

"In the Hall of the Mountain King" -Grieg  
"King of Lullaby" -Eiffel 65

* * *

"Help me!" she cried. "I'm going to fall!" The little cluster of goblin ambassadors stood stupidly in the doorway, too afraid to come closer. "Join hands and make a chain!" she shouted. "Right now!" Somewhere below her, terribly far below, she heard the crunching of plywood and plaster and the crash of lighting rigs. _Gravity, you are not a friend_, she thought angrily, and kicked her legs, trying to swim in empty air. The goblins, linked arm-in-arm, slowly extended themselves out to her. They grabbed her hands. "Now pull!" she shouted. "Pull or it's the Bog for all of you! On three! One, two, THREE!"

For one horrid moment she thought she was going to go over the edge and take the entire crack-the-whip of goblin rescuers for an honor guard. But they pulled, and her belly scraped painfully over the stone, and she rolled over onto its solidness gratefully. Her heart raced. _This was living! What fun! What an idiot I am!_ She laughed and picked herself up. "Thank you," she said. "Where's the door out of here?"

"Two doors," said the goblin who'd grabbed her hands. "The door out, and the door in."

"Just the one that leads back to the castle," she said. And they ushered her out of the Escher maze and back into the castle proper.

"It's just like I remember," she murmured, looking around the throne room. Of course, she hadn't seen much, just a glimpse. But there was the throne, and the pit, and the ledges and holes and catwalks and tunnels and passages honeycombed all through the stones, and each opening occupied by a goblin, or sometimes a chicken. She glanced at the clock hanging over the throne, and blinked. The sweeping bronze arms had been broken off; it was dead time now. The oculi and murder-holes showed a starless night in the Underground. It stank, and the light from the torches and braziers was smoky and uncertain.

"Huh," she murmured.

"Sit here!" cackled her goblin entourage, pressing her toward the throne. "Up there! Be the Queen!"

"No," she said firmly, digging in her heels.

"Of course, of course," cried a goblin. "Crown her first!"

"Cut her hair!" A thousand clever cruel hands gripped her body and pulled her over to the throne. _Hostile crowd-surfing_, she thought. _I hope they don't drop me_. She tried to struggle free, but it wasn't much use. They held her fast. A goblin waited by the throne with a huge pair of scissors, brandishing them in a way that gave Sarah little confidence in his training or education.

"I can't be Queen!" she shouted. "You still have a King!"

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady," said the littlest goblin, "But King gone!"

They pushed her to the throne and pressed her head to the pillow there. _Jareth_, she thought, _I will never forgive you this, because I think my cheek is resting right where your royal rump should be._ "Wait!" she yelled, as the goblin with the scissors opened the rusty blades. "I have an idea. The Goblin King told me—" she thought quickly. "He's got a substitute for when he's gone. He left you a chicken prince. There!" She pointed in a direction that she hoped led to a chicken. All the goblins turned to look, and made a dash for a scrawny black bantam. _Oh thank God_, Sarah thought. "Get him!" she shouted, standing up and shoving the scissors away from her and kicking their holder for good measure. Carefully she wended through the throng, as the goblins, crowing with their prize, deposited a chicken on the cushion her head had so recently vacated. It flitted and tried to escape once or twice, but then ruffled its bedraggled tail and shat upon the seat. _Excellent_, she thought.

"You," she said quietly to the littlest goblin who seemed determined to stick by her, "Show me to the King's chambers. Now."

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady," said the little goblin. "This way!" She followed the goblin as quickly and quietly as possible. There was only room for one strutting cock on that throne, Sarah fumed, and wouldn't she just love to put the right one back there as quickly as possible.

Up a second set of stairs and down a curving passage, the little goblin stopped before a simple door made all of iron. The little goblin—Yimmil, by name, when she'd asked—had kept a clear distance. There was one doorknob, in the shape of a crystal orb, set six feet off the ground. It turned easily under her hand. Behind her, she heard the raucous sounds of the goblins making much of their ersatz King. She'd need time to figure out what to do, and it seemed that the Goblin King's chambers—with their iron door—would be a good place to start, and be a safe place to collect herself.

* * *

Sarah wasn't sure what she had expected out of the Goblin King's bedroom—perhaps the vibrating opulence of a porn palace boudoir, or maybe the costume-belching disarray of an actor's dressing room—but it certainly wasn't this.

Inside was a garden, false and real. The false were trompe l'oil paintings on the plastered walls, showing coppiced art-nouveau trees bearing fruit against midnight-blue twilight. The stars in the sky of the midnight-blue ceiling were jewels. The grass on either side of the spiraling path was stitched and dagged silk. The stone wall to the other side was also a stuffed couch of gray velvet. There was a single golden perch in the center of the room, nine feet high, plain and unadorned, with an isinglass lantern finial in the shape of the crescent moon.

But oh, it smelled real. It felt real. She could feel the cool summer-evening breeze wafting through. She heard the flutter of bat's wings and saw them gliding their two-dimensional way over a bend of the painted trees. She watched the paintings for a few minutes. They were so realistic, but so obviously art, and yet everything in them moved. The jewels sparkled, the trees shivered gouache branches in the summer wind. Tempted, she reached out a hand to cup a painted apple and it came away golden in her fingers. Sarah held it a moment, and then left it at the base of the perch. _He must sleep as an owl, she thought. This perch is high enough to keep him out of reach of the goblins, and is too slippery to climb._

_He sleeps in the crest of the moon, in a painted garden of delights_.

She was mystified, but gratified. It hadn't been what she'd expected, but it felt right, and she found herself feeling some sympathy for the Goblin King. After the messy and dangerous chaos of the throne room, this place felt like a comfortable

_cage_

place, a pleasant

_box_

place where she could rest and think in peace and privacy. It must be hard on him-

_You stop that now, Sarah Williams!_ she scolded herself. Whatever else had happened, the Goblin King had abandoned his duties and dubious prerogatives, leaving things for her to clean up-dangerous things like goblin barbers. His magical mystery bedroom wasn't even part of the equation.

And speaking of cleaning up...

The artful waterfall rushing into slower-moving pools against one garden wall was also a cascade of white towels, mirror, and a sunken tub of hot running water. There had to be a wardrobe in this garden, because when she'd been here last Jareth had changed his clothes six or seven times in less than ten hours. She looked around with a careful eye. _There._ There was a wooden gate set in the stone wall. She thumbed the latch and opened it. Inside there was a bathroom, shockingly modern, with white tile and porcelain. That solved one problem at least, and she was glad she didn't have to try to use whatever facilities the goblins did. The overhead light was flickering fluorescent. An unpleasant space, functional, without mirror or shower. _The necessary_, she thought, remembering her granny's name for the washroom. She wondered if the light stayed on perpetually or if it went out like a fridge when the door was closed. She closed the door.

The false moon glowed in the false twilight.

How she longed for a desk to be in here! A desk with papers. Hell, even a book, even if it was in a language she couldn't read. But there were no writing implements and no paper anywhere. There were no clues at all as to the private life of the Goblin King. This room might have been used yesterday, or never in a hundred years. She longed for an orgy of evidence, a series of clues, a videotape, a map with X-Marks-The-Spot to tell her what to do next. Heck, she'd even take a death-threat or a blood-scrawled hex sign forbidding her to go on.

_No, I wouldn't, _she smiled to herself. _Nothing is what I'd expected, beginning with beginning here in the center of the Castle instead of the outer edge. Painted trees that let down real fruit. A chicken king to substitute for the real one. No idea how to proceed, and a destination- _you_, Jareth-that can shift on a dime. This is exactly as it should be.  
_  
She eased down into the broad gray-velvet softness of the un-stone-wall-couch. A bank of wisteria was a green wool rug embroidered with living purple flowers. She was sleepy and well past a functional time of night for thinking. She pulled the rug around her shoulders. It was heavy and just warm enough.

_Take off your clothes or you'll regret it in the morning_, her mind whispered. She wriggled out of them and heard them drop to the floor, and snuggled deeper under the rug. It had a scent, not flowery, but like city pavements in summer after a rain, with a note of something dark, like sandalwood or amber, the subtle funk of masculine flesh, a bitter tang of cigarette smoke. It was a tricky smell, and it made her feel relaxed and excited at the same time, and just a little … she rubbed her nose in the cushion and stretched. _Oh_, she thought. _That scent._ This room, however long unused, smelled of him. That was the smell of Jareth, an elusive smell for an elusive king. She smiled and drifted...

"Hello again, Sarah," she heard him say. His tone was fond, and she felt fond of him, too, and knew by that open fondness that this was a dream. But it seemed very real. He was kneeling beside her, arms folded under his chin just on the lip of the couch, face to face with her. He tilted his head so he could look in her eyes. "I was expecting you much sooner." He smiled at her, briefly touching a lock of her hair. "Avoided a nasty haircut, did you? Well done." She smiled back. _Jareth,_ she thought. _I'm so glad I found you._

"Technically, I found you. I felt the world shift when you arrived. But no reason to bicker over trivialities. You're here now." He gave one slow, deliberate blink, and his voice became stern. "Tell me why I shouldn't send you right back home again. You're far too old for adventures like this." He looked the same. Just the same. He hadn't aged a day.

"I'm younger than you," she retorted, but the heat of her voice was diffused with pleasure. "I can't go home yet," she said. "I can't. I made a promise." She reached out to touch him. He flinched away just before her fingers made contact with his cheek. "Please," she said. He looked at her, then bent his face, fitting his cheek to her palm. "Warm," she said. "Alive."

"Yes." His eyelids fluttered with pleasure. "You want to find me that badly?"

She wanted to run her fingers through his hair; take him in both hands, pull him in beside her. She felt her naked skin caressed by the flower-garden blanket, and wanted to peel it away and offer him everything. She felt very strong. _I could cover you and make you warmer, _she thought_._ But she didn't. Somehow she knew that he was suffering this one touch and would be insulted if she attempted more.

"Tell me what I have to do," she said. "To stay."

"I've left a number of tasks undone," he said after a few moments. She felt his jaw move under her hand. So strange that a mouth as spare as a hatchet-slash could make sounds so profound. "I've left quite a few. To find me, you'll need to follow where I've gone and finish what I've started. If you find me, there will be one last door I'll need your help to open. Are you willing to do that?"

"Yes," she said. "Oh yes." He took her hand between both of his, the leather of his gloves slippery on her skin. He caressed her hand and brought it to his lips, and gently kissed her wrist. Her veins exploded like stars under his mouth.

"Then don't turn back," he murmured in the dark, his voice fading as surely as the rest of him.

"Jareth!" she called. But he was already gone.

* * *

_Things got lime meringue quicker than we anticipated, huh? No worries, limes keep the scurvy at bay. Thank you again to my superb beta Nyllewell, who keeps this pirate skiff afloat amid the flotsam and jetsam of my word-spewing brain. Arr!_

_The title of this chapter is a play on Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King," which is something you should listen to very soon! Heavy metal classic, that._

_On a side note, I'm just as hungry as any other author to hear your feedback and get those reviews. Please let me know what you think? I promise to answer any questions you ask, though the answer might be "Can't tell you that yet!" Oh, you good people, the ideas your reviews give me...  
_

* * *

_**Next... Chapter 3: "Good Knight, Goblin Market"**_


	3. Good Knight, Goblin Market

**Good Knight, Goblin Market**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter 3**

"Animal" -Miike Snow  
"Astral Conversations (B-Side)" -ASH

* * *

She imagined that Jareth was still there, still kissing her wrist. It tickled in a definite, real way. She opened her eyes and looked, expecting to see him. Instead, there was a bangle cuffing her left arm. She stared at it a moment, trying to credit what she was seeing. Light as cigarette paper, heavy as a shackle, it was an openwork metallic cuff of silver vines and white leaves, intertwined with fragile strands of gold and black silk. She shook her hand. It was comfortable, but had definite weight to it. It looked very familiar, but she couldn't quite place it.

"Oh, shit," she moaned. What was this? What had she said to him? "Oh, no." She closed her eyes. He'd been there; right there, and instead of letting him send her home, she'd begged him to stay. She blushed. Oh, it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all. The sleep of reason bred monsters and the sleep of the Labyrinth bred defenseless admissions of affection for the Goblin King. Confessions, kisses, and gifts. She opened her eyes again and stared at the weird what-was-it, vambrace? Cuff? Love-token?

Sarah had a momentary urge to take it off—or rip it off, because there seemed to be no obvious catch and it looked delicate enough to snap easily—but checked the impulse. _Fairy gifts are dangerous_, she thought to herself, rolling her wrist over and back, enjoying the way it seemed to catch and absorb the light. _Dangerous to accept, but even more dangerous to discard_. The gold and black strands caught her eye. _Is that his hair? And mine? _She fretted. Was this a sentimental gesture or some sort of warning? She brought it to her lips and kissed it, just where he had kissed her in her dream. The little silver-white leaves seemed to tremble and flutter against her mouth. She closed her eyes. _I'm sentimental,_ she thought sadly. _He doesn't have to do anything but appear before me and I'm fourteen again, wincing at and adoring his every move. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair!_

_No time for that!_ She scolded herself in a friendly voice. _Maybe it's unfair, but that's how it is. I agreed to take up his challenge, dreaming or not. It's time to begin! _She squeezed her eyes tight, rebellious, and made a slow, sensual stretch. Then, afraid she'd never summon the will to do it, she threw back the rug and planted her feet on the floor and greeted the day with defiant glee.

She hummed a little ditty under her breath as she stepped into the hot bath, thinking about the plan for the day. As she soaped herself, keeping her left wrist out of the water, she looked around the room again. Daylight had changed it, but not by much. The perch was a ghost-moon and the light came from a golden disc on the ceiling that burned with a thousand tiny sconce flames. The twilight-navy painted sky of the night before was now early yellow-green dawn. The painted trees, fruit and hawthorn and poplar, seemed closer, shuttering her in privacy. A cricket chirped somewhere, marking the temperature. It would be a warm day, good for travelling. Thank goodness it hadn't rained in the night.

She felt very jaunty as she stood on the steps of the castle twenty minutes later, freshly washed, freshly combed, and her pack on her back. There was only one complication. Yimmil was stuck to her ankle like a nervous cat in a strange house. He'd apparently slept in the corridor outside the King's chambers, and when Sarah came out, he'd executed an adorably floppy bow. "I go with you, Yes-Ma'am-Lady," he said cheerfully. Sarah sighed, feeling a bit like she had when she'd volunteered as a job-shadowing mentor for earnest-eyed high school students. "Okay," she said. "But you do what I say. No!" she said when Yimmil made a move to climb up her jeans and catch a free ride on her shoulder. "If you can't walk, you don't go." _Honestly, goblins._ Sarah rolled her eyes Jarethward, feeling simpatico with him.

There were two milk-bottles aside the door, still cold. She grabbed one and sipped it as she walked down into the Goblin City. The first order of business, she decided, was to try to find Hoggle, Sir Didymus, and Ludo and pump them for information. How long had the King been gone? And why hadn't they told her? She felt a flash of annoyance but tamped it down. Ludo was good and sweet, but rather dense. Sir Didymus was brave and kind, but prone to excitement and his own self-appointed tasks. And she hadn't needed either of them for much longer than she'd needed Hoggle. So why hadn't Hoggle come to tell her the Goblin King was missing?

She recalled with perfect clarity what he'd said to her when she was fourteen, getting around the edges of making fun of his abasement before His Majesty, King of Pants and Murder Devices. "I'm a coward, and Jareth scares me." Hoggle was the only one to give her the Goblin King's true name, which she understood later to be an immensely courageous act. But he'd done it while warning her how dangerous the Goblin King was—not that she'd really needed the warning, since that was immediately after their run from death by spiraling, moving blades. Hoggle was sensitive and perceptive, and protective of her. If the Goblin King had gone, likely Hoggle would have felt nothing but relief. But only if Hoggle knew where the Gob-

She stopped suddenly and did a spit-take of her milk. "HOLY cats!" There just outside the stone curtain-wall, on three spikes, were three enormous severed heads. _Goblins?_ She wondered, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. Flies buzzed around them; what little blood there was looked greenish, and they smelled of rot. Revolted but curious, she stepped closer and saw that each spike had a little wooden plaque nailed to it, and paper affixed to those. She couldn't read the words at first, but then they swam into focus, as if the letters were self-translating into English.

"SEE HOW THE GOOD KNIGHT METES OUT JUSTICE TO THOSE WHO BREAK THE KING'S PEACE"

The message was the same under each head, but under the first message was the word "TREASON." The second was the word "BRAWLING." And the third was the word "THIEVERY." She stood back, goggle-eyed, and slowly moved the milk-bottle behind her back. "Yimmil," Sarah asked, "Whose heads are those?"

"Magic heads!" Yimmil said happily, filching her milk. "All around the city is magic heads!" He was very matter-of fact, though Sara had never seen goblins as big as these before. She circled carefully around the heads and entered into the Goblin City. Well. Things had gotten a whole lot more serious in the Goblin City since she'd been here, though admittedly back then it had been at the head of a tiny army bent on wholesale war. Perhaps the Goblin King had found it necessary to institute some changes after that silly, brief, and utterly triumphant battle for the Castle. As soon as she got properly inside the City, though, she suddenly realized why the King's Peace was so rigorously enforced. The Goblin City had been a collection of bucolic hovels seventeen-some years ago. Now it earned its name. It truly was a city. The buildings had grown taller, with upper stories overlapping the edges of the lower ones in increments until it all seemed night-time. The street she was on debouched into a long plaza and it was full of goblins.

It must be a market day, she saw. Not every day in a medieval city was a market day, and she'd had some arguments with the producers of a short-lived faux-medieval soap opera who insisted that the market be a perpetual open-air mall. She'd offered the idea of a tavern instead for the social scenes—medieval people were nuts for their grog—but had lost that fight. No matter, they had scrimped her fee and the show had toppled after a half-hearted three episode run. So, Market Day at the Goblin City. Goblin Market. She chuckled to herself. An historical European market day resembled a cross between a flea market, a farmer's market and a carnie sideshow, and there was all of that here, well underway. She paused at the edge, at a display of potatoes and onions still with the dirt on them, getting a glimpse of the crowd. Goblins were here in abundance, but she could see there were other types of creatures as well. Her head felt dizzy at all the varieties of magical humanoid creatures gathered in one spot. Some she could identify, but most left her reeling.

There were graceful figures escorting bowls holding vermillion fish that lazily waved their hair-fine tails at items they wanted to buy. There were Rackham dwarves dickering over a selection of open-mouthed laughing green rutabagas. There were enormous armored hoplites whose armor was layers of origami frogs. Beyond was a decrepit carousel turning its rusty way by means of harnessed ostriches. There, down the center of the square, a grated vent gave off a screaming puff of steam and minutes later a crowd of strange and beautiful, otherworldly people were rising up recessed stairways into the central plaza. A sign over the arch indicated that below were subways leading to London, Mercatroid, Bonny Dark and Fiddler's Green (on the half-hour, Twos-days Thor's Day and Sinday). Above all, there were goblins, the clever and the stupid, the small and the taller, the laughable and militant, seeming to be the center of all the commerce.

She was considering getting her phone out to snap some discreet pictures, and cursing that impulse that had made her leave her good camera behind, when she saw someone looking at her. She thought for a moment he was human, but he had two short ivory horns curling out of his thick, curly, dark hair. He gave her a glance that seemed full of ominous warning, and mimed flipping a hood over his head. He repeated the action twice, grabbing the lapels of his red wool coat. Sarah was caught between amusement and terror with this dumb show, until he walked over to her and pulled the blue scarf around his neck and offered it to her. "Put this on, you pretty idiot," he said with quiet amusement and exasperation, "Over your head and hide your ears before you get yourself in trouble." At once she understood, and wrapped the cotton length the way he directed. "That's better," he said. "Little human girl, what are you doing here? And can I escort you to the nearest exit back to Chicago or Portland or Diagon Alley or wherever it is you've come from?"

"Is not girl!" screeched Yimmil, kicking at the man's shins. "Is Yes-Ma'am-Lady!"

"Yes, thank you, Yimmil, that's quite enough," Sarah said, but glad the little goblin had said something before she made a defensive and prickly ass out of herself in front of this handsome stranger. "I'm a guest of the Goblin King," she said. "And I've got things to do on his behalf."

"Goblin King!" The man in the red coat tilted his brown face to the air and laughed. "What a story." He scrutinized her for a moment then shrugged. "The Goblin King, who's been absent these seven years, sets tasks for a human girl?" He had an American accent, seasoned with the edge of the New York gutter. "It's impossible enough to believe." He laughed again. Sarah found herself irritated, but not offended. Well, perhaps offended. Whoever this tall man-satyr-white-knight was, with his eyes like the oblong slashes of woodcut geishas, and his flexible, pretty mouth, it was hard to be angry with him. She was suddenly, painfully reminded of Jareth, although they were nothing alike. Well, nothing except the sexy snark, which would be plain disdain without the charisma. He stopped laughing just a moment before she would have joined in, and looked at her seriously. "So where's your hall pass, Miss?"

"My what?"

"Your token. Your charm. His favour. In a word, proof. Otherwise I send you right back to your proper world. I couldn't have you on my conscience. You're too sweet and too dumb to last long here."

"No-Sir-Lord, you is rude!" Yimmil barked. "Yes-Ma'am-Lady not dumb!"

"My goblin companion ate his Wheaties today," Sarah said, hands on her hips. "I'd like to see you try to make us do anything." She bared her left wrist with a flourish, showing the silver bracelet around her wrist. "And the Goblin King's, what, token? Will this do?"

The horned man was instantly contrite. "My apologies, Milady." He swept her an incredible, outlandish bow, one leg outstretched before him, the other canted behind him at a dancer's angle. She saw the scabbards of two swords at his belt as he did so. He bowed gracefully and respectfully enough that she felt relatively mollified. "Sincerely. My name is Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. You can call me Finnvah. I'm at Milady's service."

"It's Sarah," she said, irritably reminded of Yimmil's perpetual 'Yes-Ma'am-Ladys'. "Just Sarah, thank you … Finnvah."

"Just-Sarah-"

"Sarah."

He shrugged in annoyance. "Sarah, what on Earth and Under are you doing at the Goblin Market?"

"I don't know, shopping? Thanks for your scarf, and your offer, Finnvah, but I'll be on my way now. Good day." She knew it sounded like "Fuck you," but that was approximately what she meant. She turned on her heel and walked into the crowd.

"No-Sir-Lord is always rude," Yimmil muttered at her knee. "Big-boots bossypants."

She was inclined to agree. "He's not a goblin, is he?"

Yimmil made a rude sound. "No-Sir-Lord no goblin. Human blood in him, very strong. But he come here and try to tell the goblins what to do. Fetch this! Bring that! Don't touch that thing! Don't pick that scab! Bossypants. Goblins don't want him." Yimmil's tone darkened. "He carry iron blade. _Iron blade_. Very scary, No-Sir-Lord."

"How long has he been here?" Sarah asked.

"Long time. Weeks? Used to be vees-ee-tor, but now stays all the time."

"Yimmil," Sarah asked carefully, "Is No-Sir-Lord the Good Knight? The one keeping the King's Peace in the Market?"

Yimmil laughed raucously, drawing some attention to them. "Oh, no. That other. Other knight!"

"Hm," Sarah said thinking. "Sir Didymus," she said. It had to be Sir Didymus. She'd met him last on her adventures, and so it was meet and proper that she find him first this time. Of course, it all made sense. Sir Didymus was the Good Knight. "Do you know of Sir Didymus?"

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady, he in the City."

"Take me to him, please, Yimmil," Sarah said. They left the Market and wandered quickly through the dense towering streets of the Goblin City, passing by two more triads of spiked heads on their way out of the market plaza, until they came to the very outskirts. Sir Didymus was standing there in front of the great bronze gates, loyal steed Ambrosius trembling at his side.

"My Lady!" he said, doffing his cap, ready to give her some flourishing speech of reunion and welcome. Her heart glowed with love for him. "My Lady!" he said again, this time in warning, brandishing his staff fiercely. Sarah looked over her shoulder. Somewhere along the way they'd picked up a tail. Two nasty-looking trolls, in leather armor and clubs, had been sneaking up behind her. Now, pretense discarded, five yards away, one of them brandished his weapon in a way that made Sarah nervous for her life and limb.

"Dinner!" he boomed. "Skinned and roasted human!" Yimmil, squeaking, climbed her jeans like a baby kitten and shrieked his terror in her ear. "Goblin stuffing!" shouted the other.

"Back, you fiends, or taste the justice of the Good Knight!" called out Sir Didymus as he plunged forward, to put his tender and frail body between her and certain violent doom. "My Lady, save thyself and thy retainer! I shall deal with these fell creatures!"

Sarah narrowed her eyes. She wasn't going to watch Sir Didymus die in a one-sided fight. She shrugged Yimmil and her pack to the street, reached in, and pulled out her gun.

* * *

_The gun is disturbing, I know, but Sarah occasionally has to sleep rough in her car in L.A. Of course she's got a gun. Anyone care to lay bets on what a bad idea it is to bring a firearm to a magic fight?_

_Thanks to my beta, Nyllewell, who says "good (k)night!" (and perhaps also 'Nee!') to tempting-but-wrong prose choices and rogue traitorous grammar and spelling issues._

_ As for Diagon Alley, yes, we do have J.K. Rowling to thank for that, but you should also direct your attention to Nyllewell's superior Labyrinth-Harry Potter crossover series "The Paths We Walk" for epic yummy Labyrinth-Potterverse goodness._

_ The two milk bottles outside the Castle doors are not my detail; they are Jim Henson's. They appear in the film. (Holy cats, Jim, we need you. Come back to us soon.)_

_ Yimmil is an original goblin character, and equal parts annoying, helpful, and adorable. I think every Labyfic writer gets a goblin as part of the whole author's gift-basket thing. _

_ And a gigantic peach (or owl pellet, dealer's choice) to the first person to correctly state who Finnvah-Vercingetorix is. Those who've read "Exile from the Labyrinth: the Lament Configuration" have special advantage. We'll be seeing a lot more of him in this story._

_As per usual, readers, if you see something, say something! If you like a chapter, praise a chapter. I get paid with your attention, so leave me a review!_

* * *

**Next... Chapter 4: "The Laughing Gnome"**


	4. The Laughing Gnome

**The Laughing Gnome  
**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter 4**:

"Warrant" -Foster the People  
"The Laughing Gnome" -David Bowie

* * *

She was dying. That much seemed likely. But at least she'd made her last stand like an American, brandishing her gun like an idiot, thinking it would solve her problems. There was little comfort in the thought.

She'd run in front of Sir Didymus, taking care to draw and aim and fire on a held breath. The bullet, perfect and true as her aim could make it at the range, had embedded itself in the forehead of the first troll. He'd looked surprised for a moment, but instead of toppling to the ground, dead, he'd merely scratched at the wound in confusion and anger, and changed her, swinging his club. The second bullet she fired did no more good than the first. Like a wasp-sting, it only made the troll angrier.

The club had caught her in a full-body uppercut. _Wow_, she thought, feeling the air leave her along with her breakfast milk and her ability to comprehend lethal pain. _I'm flying!_ And she was, she was flying, but her flight was arrested by the brass gates, which caught her and did inertial damage to her spine. She landed sitting up, like a rag-doll, against the city walls and watching the rest of the fight take place. She wasn't sure what she was seeing, only that it was probably Sir Didymus' last moments, and that it was all her fault.

A red whirlwind flew down the alley, spinning with lightning-strikes of silver and gold, cutting the hamstrings of one troll and severing the hand of another. "Avaunt ye!" the whirlwind cried. "Hie ye back to your homeland and never return to the Goblin City, lest you feel the full weight of the King's Justice on your heads!" She heard Sir Didymus barking in triumph, and heard Ambrosius howling, and felt Yimmil murmur worriedly in her ear, but she closed her eyes. She was past thinking. "Let's get her to the Laughing Gnome," she heard a familiar voice say. "We need to get under cover and she doesn't have much time left." And then strong arms had picked her up. _Oh god, don't do that, just leave me, I'm done for. _ The pain was unbearable. She tried to scream, but all that came to her lips was bubbling froth.

_I'm dying_, she thought. She was being put down on some solid surface. It was dark, though she wasn't sure if this was due to their surroundings or just part of her life being extinguished. A face leaned over hers. _Jareth_, she thought. _Have you come to me now? _

But it wasn't Jareth's face, it was Finnvah's. He looked frightened and angry. He leaned over her and put his hand on her waist. "You've got four broken ribs, a punctured lung, and the back of your skull is cracked," he said to her. "I should have sent you home." His voice was shaking. "Sarah, I have to help you. You're going to feel very… odd for a few minutes."

She wanted to ask him what he meant, but his hands moved on her, cupping over her ribs and pressing in painfully. "Look at me," he said. She did. She didn't understand what was going on, but his eyes were golden-brown, and clear. His face was so close to hers. His pupils seemed to dilate as he hummed one low note, and she breathed it in. He smelled like sex and honeyed almonds. She exhaled, choking on her blood, and his nostrils flared as he took her breath in. Everywhere he touched her seemed to tingle and burn with an intense heat that coursed through her veins. It spread until every nerve, from her head to toes was alive. Her vision blurred, so she closed her eyes.

"Oh," she gurgled. She made more noises. She couldn't help making them. They weren't noises of pain. She felt good. She felt so good. She felt sexy. She wanted to writhe under that touch, and moments later, she found she could. When the pleasure ebbed, she found she was clutching Finnvah's coat as if he were her property, squeezing her thighs together in the hot rhythm of her blood. She blushed, but didn't release him all the same.

"I should have sent you home." He shook his head in disgust. "Fragile humans." He pushed her covetous hands away from his coat and helped her sit up, rolling his eyes as once again she reached for him. "Wait a moment and this will pass." The lust faded and logic took over as she glanced around at her surroundings. She'd been deposited on a goblin-sized table, and there were goblin-sized chairs and benches, and a summer fire in the grate. Sir Didymus was watching anxiously from one bench, and Yimmil was squeaking nervously as he shook from the floor. Finnvah took a step back and gestured,. "Welcome to the _Laughing Gnome_. Generally it's a tavern, but today it's a makeshift hospital for—"

"Fragile humans, I know," Sarah said irritably. Finnvah's magic hadn't been absolute. She still had a raging headache and, in the absence of the pleasure he could apparently give, she could feel bruises he hadn't been able to completely heal, and a good dose of mortification that she pushed away. She wished she had packed aspirin, or cyanide—anything to shut up the agony in her nerves that still remained. "I could have handled that!" she said angrily to Finnvah. Her body was shaking with unused adrenaline. "You didn't have to get all—big-boots-bossypants on me!"

His eyes widened in surprise and hurt, and she was almost sorry, but then he pointed a finger in her face and shook it, _actually shook it_, as if she were a child. "You were stupid! Stupid! What use is a gun against full-blooded Grinnerkin? That's like using harsh language against a steamroller." His volume increased until he was shouting at her. "You're an idiot! A typical human idiot! Not even creative with the stupid!"

"You be nice to Yes-Ma'am-Lady!" Yimmil howled up at him. Sarah tried to block out the noise, glad for her amen-corner in the body of a little goblin no higher than his enemy's boot, and wondered if she was going to vomit. She swayed on the table, her vision blurring. Fin's hands caught her under her armpits.

"Once more into the breach," he growled, holding her against him with one arm and cupping her skull with another. _Nope_, she thought_, I think I'd rather die than have to thank you for saving me_. But she looked in his eyes as he looked down at her, and felt the icy-sweet pleasure crash into her flesh like a breaking wave. When the feelings ebbed this time, she had trapped him with her legs, grinding her hips against his crotch. From the state of him, he was enjoying it_. Is it rude to stop?_ She wondered. _He might think I don't like it_. She smiled wickedly and stopped the motion of her hips, hearing a strangled noise from the bench beside her.

Sir Didymus was staring at them in open-mouthed astonishment. He blinked his good eye twice. "Ah ha-ha, why don't I just go tip us a brew," he said, jumping down and going over to the kegs by the bar. Sarah looked at Finnvah again, who seemed terribly pleased with himself, and maddenlingly superior. She punched his chest to get him to move, and tried her legs.

"What was that you did?" she asked, stretching and flexing her joints. Yimmil seemed to believe it was some sort of game, and copied her.

"Oh that?" Fin's voice was sardonic. "It's my Gift," he said smugly. "It's for healing, but it has, how-do-you-say, side effects? On-your-side-effects? Or on-your-back or against-the-wall effects?" He smiled at her, a flash of white teeth in his honey-brown face. "I must have satyr blood in me, that's what my father thinks." Sir Didymus returned with four murky-looking pint glasses, a shallow bowl for Ambrosius, and a fat pitcher to fill them all. Finnvah poured out a round for everyone and sat down. Sarah sat opposite him, and Yimmil tried to grow into her side, his arms hugging her tight. She patted the little goblin and tasted her beer. It might have been brewed in a shoe, which meant it tasted better than American beer.

"Sir Didymus," she said, the sight of him making her remember what she'd been going to ask him before her unexpected near-death experience. "How did you become the Good Knight?"

"My Lady?" Sir Didymus looked confused for a moment. "I am not the Good Knight, I am merely a follower of his bright shadow."

"What?" Sarah covered her confusion with another swig of beer. The taste was less vile this time. "You're not the Good Knight?"

"Gentle Lady, no." Sir Didymus stood up on his bench and raised his glass. "To the Good Knight!" he toasted heartily. Ambrosius barked, and Finnvah tapped his glass against the little knight's, echoing his toast, and they both drowned their brew. Sarah hid her smile. It was hard to dislike the Finnvah when he was obviously such good companions with Sir Didymus. And there was the whole saving-her-life-with-sexiness thing, too.

"My Lady," Sir Didymus continued, pouring himself and Finnvah another tipple, "In the years after you left, the Goblin City trebled in size, and many goblins from many worlds took refuge here. When the Goblin King left, there was anarchy in the Goblin City. Several contingents attempted to seize the throne in the King's absence. Others took to arson, theft, and murder. The very Goblin Market was in danger of collapsing. But then the Good Knight came to me at the ford and impressed me into his service. Together we sought out and put all the enemies of the Crown and the Kingdom to the sword. What mighty battles we had in those days! But the Good Knight was on a most important quest. When he left the city, he charged me to keep the name of the Good Knight fresh in the minds of all those in the Goblin City, and to serve as his strong arm in his absence."

"And Finnvah—"

"No-Sir-Lord!" piped up Yimmil, letting out a legendary belch.

"Young Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix is my comrade-in-arms, and together we keep the King's Peace in the name of the Good Knight."

_Well, that throws my first theory into a cocked hat, she thought. Sir Didymus isn't the Good Knight, and No-Sir-Lord isn't either. Could it be…_ Sarah glanced at Finnvah, who had a slight smile on his face, as if he knew something she didn't. He probably did. "Can you describe what he looked like?" she asked Sir Didymus, whose eyes brightened. She bit her lip, half-certain before he spoke what he was going to say.

"Yes, My Lady! The Good Knight is one of the Gentry, the Fae Folk, that most highborn race. He was tall, as tall as you, with eyes the color of day and night, dressed in a white coat of enameled armor. Fair and pale, with a curved brooch around his neck. He carried no other standard but his goodness and purity, and fought boldly with a naked shortsword of dull bronze."

Sarah was about to say, "You're describing the Goblin King." _Well, not so much the goodness and purity bit_, she thought, but then, Sir Didymus always tended to get a little purple with his prose when matters of duty and honor were concerned. But she stopped because Finnvah put his hand out on the table in front of her and tapped it, and she saw the warning look in his eyes. She paused to drink and collect her thoughts.

_So the Goblin King is the Good Knight, she thought. And Finnvah knows it. Why on Earth—or Under, as he would say—is the Goblin King disguising himself as a white-cloaked do-gooder? But then… Kings in disguise as humble knights errant is traditional, isn't it? Shakespeare's Henry V did it, to gauge the mood of his people. King Richard in the Errol Flynn Robin Hood movie did it, stooping to conquer by engaging the love of the common people instead of the nobility who might betray him_.

She looked at Yimmil. Yimmil hadn't known the identity of the Good Knight, and if he had, she had few doubts as to what the goblins would have done. They would have picked up the Goblin King as easily as they'd manhandled, goblinhandled, her, and dragged him back to the castle by main force, never to let him go again. She sipped her beer and let the menfolk chatter around her. _The Good Knight was Jareth's way of looking after the safety and security of his goblins in his absence_. She looked at Sir Didymus again. He and Finnvah were reminding each other of the fine key points of good fights they'd had.

_Sir Didymus has never met the Goblin King, but hates him for my sake and because he abandoned his duties and responsibilities. Or so he thinks. I can't break his heart by telling him his noble friend and the despicable Goblin King are one and the same_. Sarah caught Finnvah's eye and gave him a nod. "Had you ever met the Good Knight before?" she asked Sir Didymus.

"Once, noble lady, when he gave me my commission to guard the Bridge against any who would cross without my permission!" Sir Didymus looked sheepish for a moment. "I broke the Bridge, my lady, and was without purpose or hope until the Good Knight returned to give me a new duty!"

"It's not going well, is it?" she asked sadly.

Sir Didymus straightened himself out with a triumphant flourish, and then seemed to crumple from uncertainty. "No?" he said, nose and whiskers twitching. "Young Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix is strong and good, but an outsider. The goblins don't respect him."

"We don't want No-Sir-Lord for King. Bossyboots human fae mutt!" Yimmil chirped. He reached for the beer-pitcher with both hands, but Sarah stopped him and poured for him.

"And while the goblins accept and respect me, my, er, ability to make a bold impression on miscreants is somewhat… lacking." Sir Didymus looked disappointed in himself and Sarah felt instantly contrite.

"Nonsense," she said. "You're wonderful, Sir Didymus. No one could do better."

"The problem is," Finnvah said, looking daggers at Sarah, "We're only two people in a very big Goblin City. I can't be everywhere at once, and I'm only a guest here. A badly suffered guest at that." He looked pointedly at the goblin. Yimmil blew a beery raspberry at him.

"I think I have a solution," Sarah said. Everyone looked at her. "But first I need to collect my gear and have a talk with Finnvah. He and I will go back to the city gates. Sir Didymus and Yimmil, you meet us there in half-an-hour."

"A covert mission!" Sir Didymus said. "That's hardly worthy of a knight!"

"I know," Sarah said, "But if my idea is going to work, you're going to have to learn the noble art of dissembling. C'mon Finnvah." She drained her beer and thumped the empty glass upside-down on the table.

Outside, Sarah started walking. She wasn't sure where she was going or if it was the right way, but she was too keyed up to care. She'd seen something just under the sleeve of Finnvah's coat when he'd tapped the table to get her attention.

"Sarah!" he called out, and found her, five minutes later. "It's that way," he said, hooking a thumb to her left. She didn't talk to him, just walked in the direction he'd indicated. "Sarah! Wait! It's dangerous here, stupid girl!"

That stopped her. She turned the full force of a glare on him. "That," she said, "is the very last time you call me _girl_, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix." She grabbed his wrist and pushed his sleeve up to his forearm. There, around Fin's right arm, was a cuff of gold metallic plastic interworked with shards of twenty-dollar bills and strands of black and blond hair.

"The favour of the Goblin King," Sarah said. "He's given you a series of tasks to perform. Just like me." She gave him a look as cold and piercing as his iron blade. "So when were you planning on telling me that you're the competition, hotshot?"

* * *

_Ooooooh, SNAP, Finnvah! She caught you out! Never go against Sarah Williams when a puzzle is on the line! (As classic a blunder as getting involved in a land war in Asia.)_

_Thank-you to my hero, my perfect beta, Nyllewell, who ensures that all goblin grog glasses are sanitized for your safety._

_Finnvah is an original character. I rather like him, though I know the rest of you (don't hurt me, Honoria Granger!) are probably angry that Sarah isn't having these conversations with the Goo-the Goblin King. Patience! You'll get your fanservice! Just trust me. I know what I'm doing. There IS a plan!  
_

* * *

_**Next... Chapter 5: "Humongous Little Wonder."**  
_


	5. Humongous Little Wonder

**Humongous Little Wonder  
**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter 5:**

"Little Wonder" – David Bowie  
"About Her" –Malcolm McLaren

* * *

Finnvah was dumbstruck. She memorized that expression, relishing it. His dark skin couldn't hide his blush.

"You're a real piece of work, you know that?" Sarah said angrily.

"And you're a real bitch," he countered, jerking his wrist away. Sarah opened her mouth in astonishment. His blush deepened as she smiled a deadly-sweet smile at him.

"That's right," she said. "A bitch. Queen B to you, Sir Jackass. You were following me, trying to get clues about what I was up to, or trying to find a way to convince me to leave the Labyrinth."

"And saved you from certain death and healed you. Yes, my plan was nothing short of nefarious."

"Give me an explanation, Finnvah. Is Jareth your father?"

His dark face seemed to drain to grey. He put his hand over her mouth, roughly, to silence her. "Who told you his name?" he hissed. "Don't you know what kind of power his name has? It's the power of binding and breaking over his kind! Never say that name out loud again. Gods Below and Above, who knows who might hear you!" He looked angry and frightened, and only when the magnitude of her offense apparently showed in her face did he move his hand away.

"I'm sorry," she said, just as low. "Sorry." She was, too.

"He's my friend," Finnvah said, patting himself down to reassure himself that his dignity was still intact, and began walking again. Sarah had to stretch her legs to keep up. "The Goblin King is one of the Gentry—one of the fae. He's not my father. Or, if he is, he's never treated me like a son."

_How does he treat you, then, Finnvah_, she wondered, but didn't ask. She had a flash of thought, of the Goblin King coming to Finnvah in his dreams, placing his pale hand over that dark face, drawing those sweet lips in for a kiss. _No. Don't think of that._ It made her feel a niggling something that she refused to name as jealousy.

"But you don't know if he's your father or not?"

"Could be," Finnvah said, blushing again and looking miserable. Sarah wasn't ready to have pity on him. That little feeling in her throat was sucking the air from her lungs. Finnvah had profound feelings for the Goblin King. _And you do too, Sarah_, the green-eyed monster whispered. _And maybe the Goblin King prefers Finnvah to you. He was summoned here. You're a drop-in_. She commanded her jealousy to shut up, and it subsided into needling murmurs of inadequacy. "But he's not human, and I am, at least enough to count. Why do you ask?"

"I can't figure you out," she said honestly. "You're a puzzle I can't solve."

"Bully for me," said Finnvah. "That must be my fae side working on you."

"I don't know," said Sarah. Jealousy was making her cruel, goading her to prove something. "I have the Goblin King pretty much figured out."

"Oh, you think?" He sneered at her. She realized suddenly that he was threatened by her, was as jealous of her relationship with the Goblin King as she was of his. "What do you know about him?" Finnvah challenged.

"I know he's got duties and responsibilities to attend to. I need to put him back on the throne. That's where he's supposed to be. He's the Goblin King."

"No," Finnvah said sharply, turning on her. "Or yes, but that's not the _only_ thing he is. He's also King of the Labyrinth. And if he wants to make a progress through his own kingdom, in disguise or not, I don't see why he shouldn't have that right. It's _his_ Labyrinth, after all. Much as I'd like to finally see the place, and see him again, I'm stuck here, trying to keep the peace in his absence so he can do whatever it is he wants to do. Why don't you go back to the Castle, Sarah? Go play with the goblins. They seem to love you. Be the Goblin Queen and let him be."

"I can't," Sarah said. "I made a promise." They passed through the street where Finnvah had dispatched the trolls; there was greenish blood trailing back in pools and blotches toward the market showing the path of their retreat, but no sign of the hand—_maybe they picked it up and took it away with them?_ _Maybe they ate it…_The thought made her swallow nervously and crave some sort of protection. Sarah found her bag and spent some time looking for, finding, and reloading her gun. Finnvah watched her, and particularly her gun, with contempt. She found the scarf Finnvah had given her, too, lying on the ground, and she offered it back to him without comment.

"So are you his mother?" Finnvah's voice was mocking. "Or his pet? You seem to have plenty of ideas of what he should be doing. Or are you actually saying he's your friend too?"

"No," Sarah said. It was her turn to blush. Whatever the Goblin King was to her, he wasn't her friend.

"So you're in love with him then. Little human gi—woman, chasing after him, begging him to love her?"

"I'm not even going to answer that!" Sarah pulled her bag to her shoulders. She found the first cruel idea at hand and struck back, wanting to give him a blow as deep as the one he'd just given her. He really was the competition—for Jareth. "Did he steal you when you were a baby?" She gave Finnvah a knowing look. "Maybe you've been turned into a goblin. But it didn't take." _He could be an abductee. Someone taken after Toby._ _He looks about the same age, maybe a little older. _She saw that the thrust had hit home, drawn blood, and he looked truly hurt. He was giving her a look of guileless incomprehension and dismay so similar to Sir Didymus' that she couldn't feel triumphant.

"That's really insulting," he said. "Are you doing it on purpose, or did you get hit harder in your mushy human noggin than I thought? Where are you getting all this crap?"

"From the story!" Sarah said. "The Goblin King steals babies and lovers, hopes and dreams, and takes them to his kingdom and turns them all into goblins and keeps them forever, and ever, and ever."

Finnvah made a rude noise. "Where'd you get all that rubbish? Have you noticed any shortage of goblins in the Labyrinth? Why would he turn babies into goblins?"

"Well, the story said—"

"What story?"

"The Labyrinth. It's a play I used to read, when I was a child. It was about a King of the Goblins who stole the Queen's baby, and she had to go through the Labyrinth to win him back." She looked at him with contempt, feeling put-upon, teased. Wasn't this all obvious?

"Sarah," he said patiently, "You're acting as though I'm a character in your story, and know all the chapters that have come before by some kind of magic. You keep asking these questions that I don't know how or why to answer and saying these weird things that come out of nowhere. I have my own life, and I have my own secrets. You're not being fair. _Stealing_ babies is par the course for Gentry, but what's in your story about the Goblin King_ turning_ babies into goblins?"

"Nothing." She stopped. Finnvah waited. Sarah felt something fall into place with a shock. "It was something I made up. Because I was being mean to Toby and I wanted to feel special. Like I was part of the story. 'What nobody knows is that the King of the Goblins is in love with me, and he's given me special powers, and he'll turn you into a goblin, Toby, if you don't shut up.' Or something like that." _I had as much power over the story as the story had over me._

_Did I make the Goblin King fall in love with me? Now there's a terrifying idea._

"Toby's my baby brother," she finished lamely. "It was a long time ago."

"I can see why he's frightened of you," Finnvah said grimly.

"Ja—the Goblin King?" There was an interesting idea, not terrifying and somewhat satisfying.

"Not very self-confident, though," he said, grinning.

"Not where he's concerned, no." She grinned back.

"That's wise," Finnvah said. "It's always good to keep some spare humility in your back pocket when dealing with the Gentry. Ah, here we are."

Here they were, back at the bronze gates to the Goblin City. "Help me open these," Sarah said, pulling at the gate-rings, not making much headway. Finnvah joined her and together they swung one portal wide. She looked around the sandy vestibule and breathed a sigh of relief. The gigantic steam-powered guard was still there, still broken in a heap just before the open gates. It was the same door she'd taken before, going in, almost eighteen years ago. "Good," Sarah said.

"My Lady!" Sir Didymus and Yimmil had arrived. She'd expected them to be early, but was grateful for good timing. _I'm the Serendipitous Queen of Good Timing_, Sarah thought to herself. "Excellent," Sarah said. She looked at all of them. "We're going to repair the clockwork guard here. Then we're going to paint it white. Then we're going to find a goblin that can drive the thing, and then _it_ will serve as the Good Knight." She looked at Finnvah. "It's the only way I can think of to thank you. Thank you for saving my life. If there's a peacekeeper here that the goblins will accept, it means you can find your … friend. And you won't have to worry about Sir Didymus being on his own." She shrugged awkwardly. "I mean, if you think it will work."

"It's brilliant!" Finnvah said, smiling an uncertain smile. "Why didn't I think of that?"

"Because you're an idiot boy, No-Sir-Lord," Sarah said under her breath. Yimmil snickered into his hands, and Sarah hushed him with a command. "Yimmil, we're going to need supplies and a tinker. Sir Didymus, we need to recruit a contingent of intelligent goblins to drive this thing. Finnvah, you're with me." Sarah dug in her bag for her toolkit. "Unless there's something else you'd rather be doing."

"Well, no."

"Good," Sarah said. "Help me straighten this machine out. We'll begin at the beginning."

* * *

She was surprised at how easy, and how natural, it felt to work side-by-side with Finnvah. He'd taken off his long red coat and laid aside his sword-belt, and rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. She saw his brown sun-kissed skin was tattooed in swirling spirals of blue letters of some Tolkienesque language. She liked the clean, slim lines of his body, the way his leather suspenders caught at his chest or hitched the seat of his pants over the admittedly admirable muscles of his posterior. He was stronger than she was, that much was obvious, only allowing her to help him move the pieces of brass machinery to soothe her sense of authority. He had his own toolkit, purloined from some fold or interior pocket of his red coat, and together they used his pry and her socket-wrench to efficiently skin the robot monster and get to the broken innards as Finnvah muttered something about goblins and their unreasonable love of English measurements. He took Sarah's direction when she felt the need to give it, but he seemed in his element. Eventually she stood away and just let him work.

He fiddled with his folded coat and pulled out a small red book. She didn't have time to see the cover, but thought she glimpsed the word "THIRTEEN" embossed there in gold. He unfolded one of the inner pages and she saw it was a book of maps.

"Is that the Labyrinth?" she asked, startled.

"It's my Red Book," he said simply, unfolding a second page. She saw that it was a schematic of the clockwork giant. "My father gave it to me."

"I can't believe you have a map!" she said incredulously. "I would have given my left ear for that when I was here! What's in there?"

"Everything," he muttered, unfolding the schematic and pinning it to the ground with his tools. "Everything but what you really need to know."

Sarah made a noncommittal noise and watched him. Her morning prediction for the weather had proved accurate: it was scalding hot and the light beat down overhead and reflected off the sand so it seemed that everything was a glare of angry heat and desert-dry air.

"Finnvah," she said, twenty minutes later. "Take a break. Talk to me." They were still alone. She rummaged in her bag and offered him one of her bottles of water. He took it and poured a measure over his hair gravely, then whipped it back. She saw, as the sweat and the water drew his thick curls down to corkscrews over his neck, that his ears were long and pointed, and had gold rings in them. _So handsome_, she thought. He took a deep drink. He handed the bottle back to her, and she poured a little over her neck and then took her own sip.

"What would you like me to talk about?" he asked. He leaned back against the stone wall and sighed with pleasure, and looked at her with the solemn merriment that seemed to be his default expression.

"Tell me about your people," she said. "Tell me about how you met the Goblin King."

Finnvah took back the water, and then reached into a thigh-pocket on his pants and pulled out a pack of Camels. He tapped it several times on his knee and opened it, offering her one, which she took. _He's definitely from my world, _she thought_. Or has certainly spent enough time there…He's just not quite human_. Finnvah lit their (_deliciously poisonous, fantastically yummy, disgusting) _cigarettes with a completely ordinary looking red Bic. She smoked slowly, knowing it would make her sick—she'd quit five years ago—but wanting that old bad habit in her lungs. Finnvah stared at his cherry and slowly exhaled rings of smoke. Finally he looked at her and talked.

"There are a lot of us," Finnvah said. "Us half-creatures, living in the world right next to human beings. People tend not to see us unless they want to. Some of us are born a little strange, and some seem to get strange with age, and some are elders—really old fairy-folk or goblins or kobolds or what-have-you who've lived in the mortal world hiding from strangers for millennia and get sort of glommed in with us because they've got nowhere else to go. My father and brothers are all Red Branch—that's a House where we live together. I don't know when I was adopted, but I remember being very young, very cold, and very frightened until the People found me and picked me up and brought me in."

"How many are there?"

"I said, lots." Finnvah took a drag. "And it's not just Red Branch. Lots. Everywhere."

Sarah nodded. She believed this. Perhaps it was her experience in the Labyrinth as a young teenager, but it always seemed to her as if the world was just tucked full of strangeness and surprise and magic waiting to be discovered. Colonies of fairy-touched people were easy to credit after six years in L.A. "And the Goblin King?"

Finnvah thought, and then stabbed his cigarette out on the wall behind him. "Our rites of passage, among my people, aren't like those of the fae, or the humans. Your little friend is right about that-we're halfway people, mutts. The Gentry—the true fae—tend to dislike us or manipulate us. And humans, well, human beings distrust and fear us. We don't belong fully to the human world or to the faerie world. So when we young ones need to attain our adulthood, we have to spend a year and a month out in the human world, in the human way, living with them. We make a city our labyrinth. It's very hard, but it's necessary."

_Thirteen months!_ She tried to imagine thirteen months in the Labyrinth and her head swam. "How old were you?" Sarah asked.

"Fifteen, sixteen. It's a good age for it. Of course, I had all of the year before to prepare. But I was very lonely, Sarah. My father and brothers put a glamour on me that made me look as human as anyone else. It was sticky, and kept me from accessing my Gifts. The streets of New York are paved with children, and I found some ways to survive that I won't embarrass your pretty round ears to relate. But there was one night in February, when I hadn't been able to find anything to eat and didn't have a squat to sleep in, when I was feeling very bad. I thought I would just go home, give it all up—"

"They would let you do that? Just go home and let it all be over?"

"Well, yes, but who could bear the shame of that?" He gave her a warning glance not to interrupt. He handed her the water bottle and she drank. "So there I was, hungry and cold and sickening for home, when the Goblin King showed up in my alley. He gave me his gloves—which were too big for me—and took me round the corner to some hole-in-the-wall pizzeria and fed me and bought me more beer than was probably good for me. We went out dancing, and he made me feel special. I knew he was one of the Gentry right away. There's a shimmery-ness to them, like they've got extra corners around their backs, like Picasso paintings. But mostly I remembered that he was very, very kind to me, in a very human way. That humanness, that humane-ness, is what I felt the strongest. He's very different from the others of his kind." Finnvah took the water, held it just underneath that sensuous lower lip. "You have questions. Shoot." He sank the bottle in his mouth.

"Was he your first?" She wondered if she even wanted to know the answer.

"No," Finnvah said curtly, swallowing. "I think I wanted him to be. He's very attractive. And he let me know how beautiful I was to him. He invited without inviting, you know? Left it up to me. But I wasn't ready. I was still a child, and knew I would be until my trials were over. I didn't want to give up my virginity before I was ready. Even to him. Sometimes I wonder if he's angry about that. If he had beckoned me any closer, asked me outright, I don't think I could have said no. But he never actually asked."

"Yes," Sarah murmured. "That's how it was for me, too." She looked at Finnvah carefully, couthly, bashful as a medieval virgin introduced to her betrothed for the first time. He was like her opposite, her animus. They'd both undergone a testing, both been given the ambiguous and dangerous attention of the Goblin King. She reached out with her left hand, the cuffed hand, and Fin took it with his cuffed hand, his right.

"That's what makes him so remarkable," Finnvah murmured, looking at her. "He saw through the glamour-saw through the disguise tied on me so tight that it took my father and my brother and another elder three days to unweave-like it was nothing. That's his Gift. He _sees_. He sees things the ways no one else does, and then he helps the half-blind—everyone must be half-blind next to him—see things as clearly as he does. And he just gives his sight away like it was as free and common as air. There are few people on Earth or Under who have the courage to do that. I think there's a little of that in you, Sarah. That must be why you're here."

"Maybe." Her hands trembled. "I don't love him as much as you do, Finnvah. I was so nasty to him. And he was cruel to me. I don't know why he wants me here. I'm afraid he may want to punish me. I've never been able to get anything right where he's concerned." _And here I go_, she thought, realizing that the little hitch in her breathing was the onslaught of uncharacteristic tears. Damn this Labyrinth and damn her big feelings. She wanted, needed, some sort of sign that she wasn't hateful to the Goblin King. Next to Finnvah, what was she worth? He was perfect. She was a fragile human. But Finnvah came close and put his arms around her, tucked his chin over her shoulder.

"No," he said. "No, Sarah, you're worthy. Love isn't a feeling. It's a doing. You came here. You wear his favour. You're doing exactly what he asked you to do. If he punishes you for that, I'll… I'll kick him. It'll hurt him as bad as your goblin's kicks hurt me, I'm sure, but I'll do it. I'll call him a jerk to his face. I'll drag him back and tie him to the throne." He patted her back soothingly.

"You're a weirdo," she sniffled, surreptitiously wiping her nose on his shoulder. "But thanks."

"Yech," he said, standing away and holding the snot-spot away from his skin. "You're welcome."

* * *

In the hours before sunset, Yimmil and Sir Didymus returned with a long-suffering Ambrosius pulling a cart of parts, paint, and goblins and, heavenly to Sarah's hungry belly, a package of fish and chips wrapped in a newspaper as big as a bedsheet. She picked at her food—the fish must have been troll-sized, but tasted perfectly and deliciously fishy—as the tinkers got to work finishing the repairs, Sir Didymus and Finnvah questioned the potential drivers, and Yimmil fussed with choreographing the paint job for the chassis.

_I'm eating too much fairy food,_ she thought. _I may never be able to go home again._ She blinked and licked her fingers. _So be it._

"Finnvah," Sarah beckoned him into the deepening shadows of the wall. He came over to her smiling. _I could fall in love with that smile,_ she thought. He took her hand and their favours met and embraced. "I need to be going," she said quietly.

"What, now? Alone?" She was gratified in a selfish way by the hurt and denial in that question.

"Alone. No, listen," she said as he opened his mouth to give what she was sure was a chivalrous protest. "This task of getting the Good Knight together is yours. I'm just helping. It won't take you long to finish what we've started here. You'll be able to go out into the Labyrinth in days, or maybe even hours."

"We should go together," Finnvah said, squeezing her hand, looking in her eyes. He wasn't using his Gift, but she felt him warm and alive and close to her. She wanted to melt, but didn't.

"We can't," she said. "I've got to find my own tasks and do them."

He stroked her palm in little circles with his ring finger, and looked at her with longing kindness. "I don't want to go without you. I need you," he said.

Sarah was floored. She'd expected him to make some gambit, some protest about her fragility, her humanness, her inadequacy. His admission hurt like a punch in the gut, or a troll-club to the ribcage. Finvarrah-Vercingetorix need _her_?

"You'll be fine," she said with confidence she didn't in the least feel. She squeezed his strong hand. "You've got your book. Finnvah, I've got to find mine, the one my mother gave me. My Red Book. It's here in the Labyrinth, out in the junkyard somewhere, if it's still there. When I find it, I'll head toward Thirteen, if we count the Good Knight gate here as Seven by the clock. You head toward Four when you're ready. That's about where I came in when I was here."

"Reconsider," he said. His eyes were mournful, and the touch of his hand in hers became a sensual tingle.

"Don't," Sarah said sharply. "Don't use your Gift to manipulate me." Finnvah looked contrite, and tried to pull away from her, but she held tight to him. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to put her intuition into words. _This is what I do, she thought. I solve puzzles. Labyrinths. Stories. Rituals_.

"When you walk the Labyrinth, you're walking yourself," she said. "Sir Didymus is a part of me. So is Ambrosius, and all the other friends and enemies I made when I came here. The Labyrinth takes and gives. What's here is what's there inside you; the things you need to see or refuse to see. Just like your trial, it's something you have to do for yourself. No one else can do it for you. I can manage what the Labyrinth—and the Goblin King—throw at me. I don't know you well enough to know what they could throw at you. Together, we're in danger. Apart, we have a chance to succeed at what we're supposed to do. Do you understand?"

"Why aren't you fae?" Finnvah said grimly. "You really are a Queen, Sarah."

"With a capital B," she said, forcing amusement into her voice. Her thin joke coaxed the ghost of a smile from him. "Listen. This is the way it needs to be done. You've met Sir Didymus, and there are other friends of mine who will help you. I'll describe them to you. Just give them my name and they'll help you."

And, certain now that this was also the way it needed to be done, she leaned up and kissed him gently on his perfect mouth. His lips were delicious. "Share that with Hoggle when you meet him," she smiled, and broke the embrace of their hands, and heaved her bag on her back. He pulled his blue scarf from his pocket and tied it around her neck. "And you keep that," he said. "Until I see you again."

Ten minutes later, she slipped through the outer gates of the Goblin City like a thief's credit card through a hotel door, and was out in the Land of Junk.

* * *

_Apparently no fae or half-fae or wee little goblin can keep from falling in love with Sarah Williams. Will we see Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix again? Was Sarah foolish to part from him? Will Sarah's unresolved issues with Jareth cause her to do something foolish? And what the heck is the Goblin King's master plan anyway? Stay tuned, loyal readers!_

_Hmm. My visitor counter shows about a hundred of you reading this story, and about thirty of you setting alerts for it, and putting it on your favorites list, but only about thirteen of you (my beloved thirteen!) have written me reviews. I value your thoughts and feedback; please share them with me. What do you like? What do you hate? What's your favorite line? Your reviews make me excited to write more and write faster. I'm totally friendly! I almost never bite, unless so requested.  
_

_Updates will occur punctually on Thursday evenings, barring Bog and disaster. Updates may also happen on Mondays, particularly if I'm deeply inspired to write (see my plea for reviews above)._

_You don't know it, but if you still like this story five chapters in, it's thanks to my beta Nyllewell, who has… apparently confiscated all my extended analogies. And a good thing, too!_

_If you're getting antsy between updates and need a Labyrinth fix, check out Nyllewell's "The Highwayman," an excellent Labyrinth novel._

_Note: when I was writing the lines -"That's his Gift. He sees. He sees things the ways no one else does, and then he helps the half-blind see things as clearly as he does. And he just gives his sight away like it was as free and common as air."-I wrote them to praise David Bowie. It's all true, and we are extremely lucky to have him._

* * *

___**Up Next... Chapter 6: "The Worm, the Pain, and Blade: First Iteration"**_


	6. The Worm, the Pain and the Blade (i)

**The Worm, the Pain and the Blade: First Iteration  
**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter 6  
**  
"The Simorgh Sleeps on Velvet Tongues"-Robert Rich  
"The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (as Beauty)" –David Bowie

* * *

_Twilight, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe_, she thought. She was being followed.

The junkyard made her nervous. It was alive with slow movement, like a restless beast, as unseen goblins and other creatures less visible tunneled and tracked their way through it. There were no stars, no moon, only the shifty and unstable light of various fires. The Land of Junk was a dump, crawling with vermin and danger. The mounds of garbage and trash were like mountains, some of them twenty, thirty feet tall, and the paths between were thin and spare. She tried not to look at the clusters of hump-backed trash-bundled creatures wending their ways through the piles of broken, busted, and lost things, though she could feel their eyes staring hungrily at her. The air smelled of factory exhaust, library dust, old alcohol, and gamey roast. And she was being followed.

_Only what I take with me_, she thought. _Only what I bring_. The thought should have brought some comfort, some feeling of control with it. But she wasn't fourteen any more. She was seventeen years older, seventeen years wiser, and she'd experienced directly or vicariously a whole world of dangers mundane and extraordinary. Her fears had multiplied as the years added up, and encompassed threats of rape, of murder, of broken heart and broken bones. She paused to go into her bag and belt her holster. The presence of her gun, heavy at her right hip, didn't do much to make her feel better, but it did something. There were things out here worse than trolls, worse than human predators.

_Stop_, she commanded herself. _Only what you take with you. Only what you bring. Oh, Finnvah!_ Her mind wailed. _Why did I leave you behind? I'm scared_.

_Keep calm and carry on, Sarah Williams_, she thought to herself. A rusty fire-poker offered itself from a pile of trash. She fitted it into her hand. It would be useful in prodding the shifting ground under her feet for sinkholes and hidden crevasses. And it was iron. Even the goblins seemed to fear iron_. And so maybe a useful weapon against whatever is following me_.

The light, like the footing, was treacherous. It was all flickers and flames, pulsing and shifting under her eyes and her feet. _I have no idea where I'm going_, she realized. The last time she'd been here, she'd been so heavily drugged on magical fruit that she'd followed any shadow of direction—even those of the snailbacked hoarders, the gin-drinkers, the junk-sorters. _They tried to make me one of them_, she thought with a shudder. _And I would have let them too, without my Red Book_.

A noise, a scamper, rustled debris where her footsteps had been a moment before._ There, behind me_. She turned and faced her enemy. In the backlit shadows of a fire, her opponent seemed ten feet tall, taller by far than the trolls who could have easily killed her in the Goblin City. She brandished her poker, breath racing, as her stalker appeared around the hump of a precarious pile…

…and came creeping up the path, no more than two feet tall, the great height merely an illusion of light and perspective. It came closer to her, the odd flickering of firelight giving way to recognition.

"Yimmil!" said Sarah, words half-screamed with relief.

"Yes-Ma-am-Lady!" He ran up to her legs and embraced them. "I find you!" He snuffled against her jeans. "King leave me. Yes-Ma-am-Lady leave me too!"

She kneeled down and put the poker aside, and picked up and held the little goblin. "Oh, Yimmil. You poor darling. I'm sorry."

Yimmil took her face in his tiny hands and looked at her with a child's solemn sadness. "Whyfor you leave me?"

"Because it's dangerous out here for little goblins," Sarah said. Yimmil tried to wrap his arms around her neck, but they couldn't quite reach all the way around, so she helped him hug her, nestling him in the crook of her arm.

"Dangerous for Yes-Ma'am-Lady too," Yimmil protested.

"Well, that's what I signed up for." She stood up, grabbing her poker again. Yimmil climbed up to her shoulder and held on to her hair. He weighed about as much as a sparrow. He squeaked when he saw the iron in her hand.

"Bad!" he cried. "Bad iron!"

"It's not hurting you," Sarah said reasonably. Still, she held it low and away from the goblin. "Anyway, I need it. Yimmil, why are you so scared of iron? I thought goblins were pretty much indestructible."

"Cold iron scary!" said Yimmil, moving to her left shoulder, at apogee with her weapon. "Can burn us. Bind us!"

"But Finnvah carries an iron blade," Sarah said reasonably. "And he's one of the People."

"Not him!" Yimmil squeaked. "No-Sir-Lord is New. New People. Human blood. Dangerous. Can't be burned. Can't be bound!"

_There's a favour around his wrist, and a love in his voice when he speaks of Jareth, that say otherwise_, she thought but said nothing. She went carefully. Where there wasn't a clear patch of sandy dirt path in front of her, she poked with her poker to test the footing. Yimmil sat over her shoulder, holding her hair, peeking out tentatively at the landscape around them.

"Bad place," Yimmil moaned quietly, and Sarah had to agree. She looked up. Had there been stars in the sky above the Labyrinth before? Was the smoke and fume of the junkyard hiding the stars from her? Or was the sky a mirage, an egg-shell, a painting on the curved roof of the world? Like the Goblin King's bedroom, was this place just a box with only the illusion of limitless space?

It was so much larger, the junkyard, than it had been before. The Goblin City was bigger, much bigger, and the path from the outer gates of that City to the Castle had been longer, too. She'd assumed that the Goblin City had expanded the way a human city would, by incorporating spare land outside its borders, spreading out. She'd expected the Land of Junk to be consequently smaller. _But I'm not dealing with a human city, or a human world, she reminded herself. The rules are different. The Goblin City is larger. This junkyard is larger. Is the Labyrinth itself larger?_ It was a disturbing thought in a zone of disturbing thoughts. This quest could take months. Years. Perhaps the balance of her lifetime. _Oh, Toby,_ she thought sadly. _Oh, Dad. I'm so sorry I didn't tell you goodbye._

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady?" Yimmil asked cautiously.

"Hmm?" She prodded the ground in front of her as she picked her way forward.

"Where we going?"

"I'm looking for something," she said. "Something I lost." Her Red Book, The Labyrinth, had been here, somewhere in this mess. The book was in a drawer, and the drawer was in a desk, and the desk was in a room, and the room was in the junkyard. But it was all buried and covered over; she'd broken it open almost eighteen years ago as effectively as she'd broken the floating bubble-ballroom. Its skin had been ruptured; it was all one with the rest of the rubbish-heap, a pile of junk festering and picked-through like all the other identical piles of junk in this hellhole.

_I'm lost_, she thought. _I'll never find the rubble of my room in all this. I'll never find my Red Book this way._

This was patently true. Was she willing to spend weeks in this terrifying, awful place, never getting anywhere, with the intuitive threat of losing herself in her looking for something else? Should she just give up and go on? She drew her hand over her forehead, and felt the Goblin King's favour rasp kindly against her skin. She looked at it.

_Jareth_, she thought. _Help me. Show me the way. Surely my need and one of your unfinished tasks could overlap? Please? _Her eyes were drawn upward as she walked around the corner of a heap, and there, high atop the mound before her, was a short bronze sword, gleaming like Excalibur in the fire-torn twilight. _Oh, thank you_, she thought. _Thank you, Good Knight_. It was Jareth's sword. It had to be.

She approached carefully, climbing up the midden-pile with both hands and feet, with Yimmil clinging to her back. She reached the top, balancing on two tilting broken chairs, and plucked it out of its resting-place. She looked it over carefully. It was strange. It wasn't like Finnvah's bronze sword at all. Although there was a leather grip stitched to it, the hilt felt strange and uneven. She turned the sword over. The front of it had a rounded and etched hilt and a blade with a channel, and the cross-guard was ludicrously oversized. The back was flat and plain, with no channel, no curvature. There was a round hole in the blade too, near the hilt. She swung it once. It was heavy, and sharp. But it felt like only half a sword. It reminded her of… her eyes opened in surprise. It was one of the hands from the clock in the throne room. The hour hand. _Jareth made time his weapon_. So what was it doing here? She looked around the junkyard from her high vantage point, trying to scout for any landmarks, any sign of what direction she should take.

She felt a tug at her boot.

"Not now, Yimmil," she murmured, and realized the goblin was still riding piggyback. _What the hell?_ She looked down. Coiled around her shin, tight and thick as a python, was a great gangrenous worm.

She took a deep breath to let out a healthy scream, and brandished the Goblin King's sword over her head.

"Stop," said the worm, with a bubbling, choking, horrifyingly courteous voice. "Please don't kill me."

"Let go," Sarah commanded. The worm, slimy and smooth as an enormous length of intestine, squeezed her leg once more and then unwrapped itself and reared up through the mound of rubbish until its snout was at a level with her face. It looked diseased and sick, green and bloated and ragged at the mouth and sliding into pink and grey toward the middle. She couldn't see its terminus. She unsnapped her holster. The worm's mouth was toothless, and its voice seemed to come from somewhere deeper in its throat. But it was listening to her, and that was good. She wasn't prepared for a fight balanced on a pile of shifting trash. "Who are you?" she demanded.

"Leviathan!" the worm gibbered sadly. Part of its length was folded inside its rough-looking mouth, pulsating grotesquely to form temporary substitutes for hard palate, teeth, and tongue. "Leviathan, but once I had another name."

"Don't listen to it, Yes-Ma'am-Lady," Yimmil begged, clutching her jacket with raw panic. "Kill it. Run away."

"Looking," moaned the worm. "Looking for him. For Prince Owl, King of the Goblins."

"Oh?" Sarah said nonchalantly. She moved the sword to her left hand, and kept her poker in her right, ready to drop it and draw her gun with the slightest provocation. "Where's your favour then?"

The worm whipped several more yards of its length out of the trash, and bent and curled itself into a semblance of shoulders, of folded arms. It darted its snout forward repulsively to sniff at her. It snuffled carefully over her wrist, and Sarah flinched back.

"Him! Oh him. I can smell him on you. His hands touched you." The worm darted a coil forward, as if offering a confidence. "He gave me no favors. He touched me, and took everything. All I had was the sword. His sword. His hands touched it. It was mine!" the worm wailed. "Give it back to me!"

The hackles on her back rose, in terror. "What are you?" she whispered. "Tell me!"

"I was a mortal man who loved the Goblin King. See how he betrayed me? See what he's done to me? Long have I searched for him, through all the layers of Hell and Humanity and the labyrinths between. I still seek him. I will find him. I will bind him to me, and I will hold him again in my arms." The voice of the worm chuckled in the semblance of sobs.

"Don't listen," Yimmil begged. "Please don't listen!"

"How would you do that?" asked Sarah. "How do you bind someone like him?" Despite how disgusting the worm was, its voice was strangely soothing. If she closed her eyes or kept it in her peripheral vision, it was almost like talking to another human being.

"Feed him," the worm moaned. "Ring him with salt. Fix him with iron. Call his true name. And then, oh then, pretty girl, pretty good human girl, bring me to him. Let me see him. I want to see his eyes again. I want to see his face."

"Stay back!" Sarah commanded. She took the sword and felt carefully with her back foot to probe for a path back down. "Don't you move."

"Love him," agreed the worm thickly. "Find him. Win him." But it didn't move. It just poised there atop the pile, like a cobra in striking pose, as she picked her way back down, using her poker and the bronze sword like icepicks to lever her way to semi-solid ground. The worm rustled its body, undulated its smooth pink length, and part of its junk-tower burrow seemed to quiver, as if its center might be all worm. _How long is it?_ she thought in terror. _How big? _

She turned her face and ran with the power of terror, as if Hell were on her heels. She picked no direction. She fled in blind panic, blades zipping in front of her as she stumbled and ran as quickly as she could. She only stopped when she couldn't breathe any more. _That cigarette was a stupid idea_, Sarah, she told herself, gulping for breath. "Yimmil," she croaked. "Is what the worm said true? Was he a human man? Did he love the Goblin King?"

Yimmil dropped from her shoulders; she realized part of her breathing problem was that his arms had been wrapped around her throat. He looked up at her with his ugly, adorable little face. "Yes-Ma'am-Lady, is true. But also not true. Not human any more. Liar. Cheat. Thing! Captured him. Hurt King. Tried to _eat_ King." Yimmil shuddered all over. "Eat goblins, too." He grabbed her legs in a hug. "Let's leave this place, Yes-Ma'am-Lady. Please."

"No," Sarah said obstinately.

She looked up and saw, half-hidden in a tapestry, inset in a pile of trash, a familiar door, a door she hadn't seen for years, a door she needed. "Oh," she said, standing up. "Oh!" And she pushed the door open and went inside.

* * *

_Listening to worms and entering familiar doors in the Junkyard. Ooooh dear, this does not bode well for our heroine. Let's hope clearer heads and common sense prevails…_

_I am overwhelmed and gratified by the positive response to this story, and truly humbled by your trust and your praise in the reviews. I will make it all very good for you. I promise. I know you're probably a little squicked out by the Junkyard, and you should be. It's a very dangerous place. But … something delicious and peachy is waiting for you in Chapter 7. You know what's coming, don't you? Sarah will have to sleep. And the sleep of reason breeds monsters and the dreams in the Labyrinth bring visitations of the Goblin King. _

_The title of this chapter is a lyric from Bowie's "The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (as Beauty)," or, as my wonder-working beta, Nyllewell, appropriately named it, "Channard's Theme." If you like the spooky creepy stuff in this chapter, and want to know more about the worm who was once a mortal man who held the Goblin King, please read my (Rated M) Labyrinth prequel, "Exile from the Labyrinth: the Lament Configuration." It exists in the same continuity as "Labyrinth: Kingdom Come."_

* * *

**Next: Chapter 7: "The Worm, the Pain and the Blade: Final Iteration"**


	7. The Worm, the Pain and the Blade (ii)

**The Worm, the Pain and the Blade: Final Iteration**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter 7**:

"How Soon Is Now?" –The Smiths  
"Prospero's Speech" –Loreena McKennitt  
"Doomsday Averted" –Rasputina

* * *

She had realized she wouldn't be able to find her childhood bedroom, and her copy of The Labyrinth, in the junkyard. That was patently a fact. So what was another fact? _My childhood bedroom wasn't the only place I kept that book._

Here before her was the memory of another room. It was a tiny, dingy garret apartment big as a postage stamp, where she'd lived her final year of college. Her love for that home had been absolute and eternal. Furnished in a beautiful street-dropped velvet couch, art-nouveau advertisements, and patchouli-stink tapestries, it had a fireplace only big enough to roast marshmallows in. On the crowded scrounged bookshelves, she'd kept her copy of The Labyrinth. In her final undergrad years, she'd rediscovered her obsessive love for her favorite childhood story, and ached to remember her friends—but not to summon them. No, it was Jareth she'd attempted to summon to her here, Jareth alone.

There had been so many attempts to call him to her, but certain parts of the ritual had always been the same. She would fluff her overstuffed ancient armchair and set it near the grate, and would place the footstool close by. She'd wanted him to sit there in the place of honor and speak with her, and she had intended to tire at his knee and listen to him. But the gallimaufry of magic spells she created out of bits and pieces of her Folklore and Women's Studies and Anthropology and Religion classes, and her naked beating heart, had failed to bring him to her. Her witchcraft was apparently as bad as her cooking, because he'd never come.

She had loved this studio apartment as completely and utterly as she loved the magical world of her childhood room. It was the only other place she had in her life that she held so completely whole in her memory, mind and body. _This is what I needed to find_, she thought.

Two years after she'd graduated, the building had been demolished to make way for some expansion to Triptoleme University's Math-and-Science college. She'd returned for her five-year class reunion and been horrified to discover the creaking apartment-partitioned Victorian mansion had been replaced with an annex and a parking lot. But the junkyard was the place where lost and loved things and places arrived—where things you loved and wanted took on a situational memory life of their own. Her home was here, and it had been waiting for her. It had been waiting, all this time.

"It's just like I remember!" Sarah said happily. If she opened the door again, it would be the junkyard, but inside this room she could pretend that it was nine o'clock in October, with the autumn wind around the eaves of the roof, the tiny fire sputtering in the grate, and a peach pie (_thank you Marie Callendar_) in the oven. She dropped her poker and the sword on the mantel, closed the drapes, bolted the door and went to her wee stove, grabbed two mismatched potholders, and drew the pie out before it burned. Yimmil explored the tiny attic studio carefully, before bouncing on her creaky bed, half-hidden behind tacked-up drapes, and curled down into the bedclothes. "Safe," he murmured. "This place safe."

"Yes," Sarah said fondly. "You sleep now, Yimmil. We're safe."

She moved through her apartment carefully, easily. Her body remembered every angle and bend. The familiarity was comforting and exciting. As Yimmil snuggled down and caught some shuteye, she dug in her chest of drawers for spare underwear and socks, stretching them over her jeans to size them. She was a little smaller in the bust than she had been in college, but she'd been going through a phase of eating her feelings in her early twenties and an intense body-beautiful Hollywood exercise regimen in her late twenties. At thirty-two, with her body between those extremes, these things would still fit.

She perused her bookshelves and tipped The Labyrinth out into her eager hands. She tucked it into her bag to examine later, and then looked at her bookshelves again. There were books here she loved and wanted… she picked out two or three and dumped them near her bag. _And there's my box of Pentels_, she thought. _And oh, my old sketchbook! I thought I lost that in the move_… she paused to open it, and then stopped, looked over at the pile. She sighed and put everything back but the The Labyrinth, and the extra socks and undies. This might be her favorite room, but it was also potentially a trap. Anything else she took and she might as well find a cord and one of the hunchback hoarders and have them tie the lot to her back. She should only take what she really, truly needed.

Sarah went through the pantry and stuffed portable food into her bag, a few toiletries. _That's all_, she thought, nodding to herself, satisfied. She sat down at the ramshackle drop-leaf table and its tilty wooden chair, and broke down and cleaned her gun. Yimmil snored from her bed like a humming metronome.

She wished she had a spare magazine, but her target instructor had told her that if she needed Dutch courage to win a gunfight then she'd already lost. So she had one magazine with twelve rounds left in it—an extra shot must have fired rogue when she'd been clubbed. Sarah sighed in disgust with herself as she reassembled her gun and chambered the ammunition. Finnvah was right. The gun was a stupid weapon to have in the Labyrinth, but she knew how to use it, and it made her feel better to have something she was good with. The gun, safety on, went back in the holster. She wouldn't be caught without it close to hand again, outside this room. The clock above the stove ticked. The scent of warm peaches and pastry-crust filled her kitchen. She had her Red Book. And this apartment had a nook of a bathroom. Did her situational memory magic include hot running water? It certainly seemed to include electricity and gas heat. She'd try it.

She took care, preparing herself as she had a decade before, with ritual thoroughness. She washed her hair and body with the perpetual Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap that had been her all-and-everything in college, and perfumed her wrists, the backs of her knees, and the furrow of her thighs with oil of sandalwood and a drop of orange essence. The smell made her nostalgic for her body's youth.

She looked at herself in the foggy bathroom mirror. She was different than she had been back then. Her face was a landscape of bones and skin that had slowly shifted and altered over the years, like plate tectonics. Her flesh was looser, the incidental fat of her belly and thighs less bouncy, though still as stubborn, as it had been ten years ago. Small wrinkles had appeared at the corners of her mouth where she'd had dimples before. Her eyes were green, her hair was thick brown, her eyebrows unplucked—still the same. A few gray hairs had come in at her temples. That was it.

_I like myself better now_, she decided. _Age has seasoned me, body and soul. I know who I am now._ _I almost lost myself back then, in endless yearnings and irritable virginity, lost myself waiting for the Goblin King_.

_Tonight he will come to me_, she thought, and felt a quivering in her body that was anticipation of desires fulfilled. _Tonight_. She pulled her sleeveless white vampire-victim nightgown over her body. The nylon stuck to her wet skin, became transparent as glass.

She fluffed up the armchair and drew it before the best place by the grate, and added another stick of wood to the fire. She cut a piece of the peach pie, sprinkled it liberally with cinnamon and sugar, and put it on her best plate. She put the plate on the little table by the chair, with a fork at hand.

She took the iron poker and concealed it under the chair. She took the canister of salt from the cupboard and drew a line of it in a wide circle around the perimeter of the room_. Ring him with salt_, the worm whispered in her mind. _Fix him with iron. Call his name._

_Sarah_, a part of her whispered fiercely, _What do you think you're doing?_

_Getting even_, she told it. _Now shut up._

She drew a rotted silk shawl over her demi-nudity. It had been a piano-shawl in some past life, and was coming to bits and fragments around its embroidered flowers and fringe, but its ancient, rich smell comforted her. She sat down on the little footstool before the armchair, and waited.

And waited. The hands of the clock met at midnight. _Jareth, where are you? I want you. I need you. Come to me, please._ She folded her arms over the chair cushion and rested her head upon them. _I won't cry_, she thought. _I won't cry for wanting him._ But she lied to herself; the tears were already slipping down her cheeks. It really was just like being twenty-two again. All the old patterns of this place were repeating themselves.

_Don't you care for me?_ her anguished soul cried.

"Precious girl, of course I care for you." It felt like the tail-end of a long breakup conversation, one where she'd long since sobbed and cried out all her feelings. He was stroking her hair back up off her ear and temple. Her head was resting on his knee, her hands folded over his lap. He smiled down at her, with a mixture of affection and condescension. "Hello again."

"I'm dreaming," she murmured. "This isn't real." She sat up. His yellow-gloved fingers tangled in her damp hair, drawing through it like a comb.

"You are," he said. "And it is." He kept his fingers locked through a twist of her hair, rubbing the texture through his leather gloves.

"You never came here before," she said, a quaver in her voice.

"I did," he said. "I did." He smiled at her enigmatically. "Many times."

She lay her cheek back down on his knee and he resumed stroking her hair. She looked at him, storing him up. His hair was longer, less uneven, but still fine as spiderweb, streaked with colors that seemed to shift with the firelight. He was wearing brown fawn-patterned pants, soft with unscraped fur, and a brown leather jacket with an absurdly high collar over a loose gi-cut gold-embroidered shirt. His amulet gleamed around his throat. _So beautiful_, her heart whispered, twisting with love. _Mine_.

The fire crackled in the grate, and Yimmil snored in her bed.

"Do you like Finnvarrah?" he asked, smiling at her, rubbing her hair, tugging gently at a skein so she thought she might die of delight.

"Yes," she admitted.

"But not enough to cleave to him and bring him with you," Jareth teased her. "Instead of a fresh young man in your bed, you've got a rather stupid little goblin."

"Don't insult Yimmil," Sarah gently reproached him. "He's devoted to me."

"Like Finnvarrah is to me," Jareth said, tugging her hair so hard it hurt. "Unlike you, Sarah. Salt in the room? Iron under my chair? Food warm by my arm?" His gaze was cold now, utterly cruel. "You've made improvements on your binding spells since the last time we were here, though the sentiment is the same. Who told you what to do?" For the first time, some real anger seeped into his voice.

"Let go," she said. "You're hurting me."

She was utterly surprised when he abruptly did, unwinding her hair from his fingers and holding up his hand to show it clear of her.

"It's the iron," she said, though she was mostly thinking aloud to herself, "And the salt. You're under my power, aren't you?" He narrowed his eyes but said nothing. Sarah grew frustrated. "Answer me!"

"Yessss," he hissed through clenched jaw.

Sarah smiled. "Good. It's about time we had a talk."

"There's nothing to talk about," he said calmly.

"Your choice, then, Goblin King. You can talk, or you can eat."

He stared his defiance at her, and she watched as his eyes flitted between her face and the food, his disgust evident. "Fine," he said, a moment before she issued an order. "What would you like to talk about?" His voice was cold.

"Peaches," Sarah said. "Fairy food. Toby. The Cleaners. And never coming back to see me."

"Feh," said the Goblin King. "I just told you, I did. I am. I'm here now."

Sarah gave him an even look. "Okay. If that's the way you want it. Your food is there, Jareth. I made it just for you. Use your fork."

Like a toy jerking on strings, trying to master his will against hers, he broke off a forkful, but didn't eat. _Not until I command him to_, she thought with triumph. "How I despise," he said, "peaches." He said it like a dirty word.

"Then you should have used apples on me instead. Or maybe bananas," she said defiantly. "Bananas would have been appropriate." She tried not to look at his pants. She stood back and wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, like a high priestess at the altar. "Turnabout is fair play, Goblin King. Don't you want your food?" She saw it squirming on his fork; it was crawling with thin pink parasites.

"No," he said. "I very much do not. Sarah," he said, staring up at her. "Don't do this to me."

Sarah raged at him. "You teased me. You hurt me! You rejected me!"

"No!" he shouted at her. "All I did was assume my proper role! All I did was refuse to refuse you anything!"

Somewhere beyond the door, she heard the worm give a lugubrious laugh. Jareth tilted his head. His eyes cut to the door. She thought she saw his nostrils flare. Beyond the door, a sibilant voice called out a name. Jareth's face drained of color, becoming as white as his shirt. "Sarah," he said, fork trembling. "Who have you been talking to?"

"Leviathan," she murmured. "The worm. He told me how to bind you. And I've done it. Who is he to you, Goblin King?"

"He's here," Jareth whispered. He shrank in the chair, as if trying to move as far from the door as possible but unable to leave his seat, still clutching cutlery, still staring at the door. It should have been hilarious. It was horrifying. "The devil," he whispered. "My hell. That filth, here."

"Tell me why, Jareth!" Sarah said coldly, not taking her eyes off him. "You stole my baby brother and put me through the wringer. Did you bring me back here to turn me into a worm? Were you planning for me to end up like _that_? Wanting you and looking for you and never finding you?"

As if his neck were made of great rusty gears, he slowly turned back to look at her. The terror floated off his face when he looked at her, was replaced with admiration and desire. "Sarah," he said softly. "You're not a child any more. Don't seek revenge like one. The goblins brought your brother to the Labyrinth, but I brought you. I gave you a chance. You asked to come. You begged me." He took a breath, and pain swept over his face. "I'm begging you now. Please, Sarah. Please release me from these bonds."

He'd never, ever, not even in her fantasies, said 'please' to her before. She covered her face with her hands. She'd fucked everything up. Everything. There was a heavy wet thump against the door.

"Sarah," he said quietly. "It's not too late. Not for anything. _Please, _set me free."

"Fine!" she yelled, kicking the poker away from his chair, walking around the room, scattering the line of salt with her feet. She took the plate and the fork from his hands. "Go. Run. Now."

"What, and leave you here alone with my most dread enemy knocking at the door?" He stood and came to her. "Never." He took her face in his two hands. "Thank you," he said quietly, drawing her hair behind her ears. _Another first. A thank-you from the Goblin King._

"What can he do?" Sarah asked, trembling. "You're King of the Labyrinth. He's just a worm."

"Oh, he could do quite a bit of damage," Jareth said, dropping his hands and moving to the door. She heard a crash outside, like breaking glass, and they both flinched. "It's never wise to underestimate human beings, even dead ones." He thought that over. "Especially dead ones." He spied through the peephole, and obviously didn't like what he saw there. "I vowed he'd never find me again. If I break that vow, he has power over me, over the Labyrinth, and likely over your world as well."

"Did you know he was here?" She rushed to the mantel and grabbed the sword. "Jareth, catch." She tossed the bronze blade to him. He plucked it out of the air without even looking, hilt-first, and twirled it in a complex pattern, as naturally as if it were part of his arm, still keeping his eye to the peephole. Dire as the situation was, she had to admire, would always admire, Jareth's style.

"Let's say I knew it was a distinct possibility," Jareth said. "Though it's been thirteen-odd years since I last spared him a thought."

"Go," said Sarah, dropping her shawl. "I'll fight the worm. It's what I'm supposed to do anyway, isn't it? Your task left undone for me to finish. I'll fight him."

"You haven't been fighting him very well up until now," Jareth snarked at her. He looked through the peephole again, and cursed. "He's hungry," he said by way of explanation. "And he's already here."

"I don't understand." She could hear the thumping at the door—the worm was on the other side. And she could hear Yimmil crying out for her, but when she looked over to her bed, he was still there, still comfortably snoring into her pillow.

"He's here," Jareth said. "I am telling you he is here _now_, Sarah." Somewhere beyond the wall of sleep, she heard the laughter of the conqueror worm.

"Jareth!" she said. "What's happening?"

"You're asleep," Jareth said. "You're dreaming, Sarah. You have to wake up."

"Help me!" she cried. "I don't know how." The door thumped again ominously, cracking.

"Sarah," he said conversationally, coming to her. "You have some cause for your grievance with me. It really wasn't just a peach. And now I need to give you more reasons to be angry with me. I have to hurt you and scare you to wake you up. Or we'll both be undone."

She fought to breathe. "Yes," she said, trying to be brave. "I'm particularly afraid of rats, or blenders or garbage disposals going off unexpectedly while my hands are in them. Just in case you need inspiration."

"You make fear your ally," he said gravely. "I'm sorry about setting the Cleaners on you," pinpointing the origin of some of her fears with expert ease, "But you'd made me very angry and I found it difficult in those days to keep my temper."

"Please," she said. "Please, do it. Just do it. Hurry!"

He reached out his hand to her, and she took it, instinctively with her left hand. The filigree and ribbons of her favour tightened on her arm, seemed to turn into hot molten metal that burned deep into her flesh. The little silver-white leaves turned sharp and whirling and buried themselves in her skin, spurting blood, flaying flesh. She cried out in agony and fell to her knees, but didn't let go of his hand. She wanted to tear the silver shackle, the beautiful torture device, from her wrist. A third part of her pain was the knowledge that she could do this, rip it away, and the pain would be over. But so would her quest, and maybe even her life. So she bit down hard, on her tongue, and kept her eyes on him.

"Does it hurt?" he asked kindly.

"Yes!" she screamed.

"Wake up," he said. "Wake up and remember this is in your other hand." He gave her his sword. "What is your first weapon, Sarah?"

_My will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great. My will is as strong and my kingdom as great. My will, my kingdom. My will is to feel the pain and wake. My will._ "My will!" she screamed. "Strong as yours!"

"And what will you tell the worm?"

_My love, my love for Jareth is stronger than your desire to bind him._ "End you!" she cried, with the last of her strength. "You have no power over me!" It was the last defiant call of a wild creature abused past all endurance, but refusing to die. _The pain! Jareth!_

"Enough!" he cried, as if he felt her pain in his own body. "Wake up, Sarah! Wake up!"

She opened her eyes. The worm was there, twined all about the room, thumping its pink coils against the walls with rhythmic pleasure. It had broken through a window, and the stinking smog of the junkyard filled the room. Broken bits and pieces of her belongings were scattered everywhere. She could hear Yimmil's muffled screams, but couldn't see him.

The wet mouth of the beast was halfway up her arm, sucking at her, grinding the bones of her wrist, and her favour, in the moist coils of its throat. She shrieked in disgust and pulled her arm wetly free. Her arm, her fingers, her favour—all intact. And she raised her sword-arm and brought it down on those rotted, smooth, glistening bends. She saw a fat bulge, like the lump in a python's belly that encompassed a rat, and raged. "Yimmil!" she screamed, cutting a length of coil. "How dare you eat Yimmil!" The pink entrails bled out blue medicinal compounds and pus, bits and pieces of her things, and disgorged Yimmil, who scrambled free and screeched and cussed at the monster.

She hacked at it again and again, moving from its end toward its source. The severed pieces of the worm vomited larger chunks that she couldn't bear to look at too closely for fear of recognizing someone. Again and again she sliced it, cutting it up into smaller and smaller parts, until she found its root, its terminus, slunk down and hiding in the lowest corner of her bookshelf. The worm, Leviathan, ended in a human head without a jaw, bound in wire, glassy-eyed and yet somehow full of a hateful intelligence. It flickered those pale eyes at her, and the last of its horrible wet trunk, inset deep in its skull, gave out a moan.

"I don't know what you are, or were," Sarah said. "But you're finished. Over!"

"Tyto Albans," the worm moaned.

"No," she said. "Jareth, Goblin King. Best of all the fae. And you have no power over him." She buried the sword in the skull, which split in two dry and ashy pieces.

* * *

Sarah moved in slow-motion, in shock, picking up Yimmil and getting them both into the shower, rinsing away the filth of the dead worm. She dressed herself again in her travelling clothes, zipping up her green jacket and holstering her gun with wooden hands. She slung on her bag—by some terrifically great piece of good fortune, it had escaped being smeared with blue effluvia, tucked under her table—and patted the top for Yimmil, who was able to sit there and hold her hair for balance.

"We go now, Yes-Ma'am-Lady?"

"Yes. In just a moment." Sarah reached into the cupboards and pulled out two bottles of cooking oil. She worked carefully, spreading their contents around the room as carefully as she'd spread the salt. She turned on both burners of the stove and cauterized the repulsive remains of worm-blood from the Goblin King's sword, and then left them lit as she went out the door. She touched the red-hot tip of the metal to the cooking oil just at the threshold, and saw it catch, burning white and hot.

Sarah stood back. She watched the memory of her favorite place burn. _But the worm goes with it_, she thought, waking up slightly. _That's something. That's worth the price_. The heap of junk that had hidden her lost and loved home fell in with a whoosh of air and flame after one quarter of an hour.

"Where we go now, Yes-Ma'am-Lady?" Yimmil asked.

"Out," she said, hefting the Good Knight's sword over her shoulder. "We're going out. Unless you want me to take you home."

"I stay with Yes-Ma'am-Lady," Yimmil said with certainty.

"Okay." A cluster of the junk-covered locals had come to watch the fire and were now blocking her path.

"Where do you think you're going, human woman?" barked one, in a familiar feminine voice. Same yellowed grey hair, same clever ancient wringing hands. Sarah knew her. This was the goblin woman who'd tried to bind all her junk to her back, so long ago. Not that long ago.

"Get out of my way," Sarah hissed. "You've got nothing I want." When the junk lady showed no sign of moving, Sarah stabbed the sword through the pile on her back and heard hidden possessions shatter and break. The goblin woman squawked and wrung her hands, but made way for her. The crowd of her peers did the same, with hobbling camel's gait. They parted before her like the Red Sea before Moses.

"Goodbye, Agnes!" Yimmil screeched to them. "We is going to find King!"

* * *

_Sarah Williams is fierce! After slaying a dragon, what's a few obstinate hoarders? Well-done, Sarah. And… well-done Jareth, too. An insult forgiven? Admissions of wrongdoing? Excellent. Despite their differences, there's some hope these two crazy kids just might make it yet! _

_Thank you, reviewers, for feeding my attention-starved beast. Every time I see that review-counter pop I literally punch the air with glee. I hope you enjoyed pie and Jareth and heroics, especially you, Fanny, hungry for a piece of the Goblin King since Chapter 2. And well-guessed on the identity of the worm, TheRealEatsShootsAndLeaves. Here's a cup of rose-hip tea. Honoria, irgroomer and Linnorria: we've got to go through squicky waters before we reach the lemon-sweet. Sky Blanton, I can refuse you nothing. More indeed. I'm exhilarated by living up to your expectations of me._

_"Beta" is short for "beta reader," but it's more accurately known as "editor," someone who turns the mushy places of a story into something worth reading. Nyllewell's done a ludicrous amount of work to make this story happen, for which we are all grateful. Nyllewell, I'd slay worms for you._

* * *

**Next…Chapter 8: "The King of Cups, Reversed" **


	8. The King of Cups, Reversed

**The King of Cups, Reversed**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter 8**

"Love is the Drug" -_Sucker Punch_ soundtrack. Perf. Oscar Isaac and Carla Gugino  
"mOBSCENE" - Marilyn Manson  
"Let's Dance" -David Bowie

* * *

The junkyard was an hour behind them now; the mounds and piles of glittering, seductive trash had become smaller and smaller until they'd become patches of shadowy objects, and then nothing. Behind her, she could see the haunting silhouettes cast by the fires. Before her was utter blackness.

She paused to rummage in her bag for her tiny flashlight and pointed it toward her feet. Yimmil took the opportunity to get off her shoulders and walk and skip around her. The tiny arc of man-made light was just enough to see the path by, but Yimmil didn't seem to mind the dark. _Goblins_, she thought blearily. _Night creatures. Lucky things_. As she walked, she sometimes had to pause as tremors and shakes overcame her. The fear and the pain of her dream, and the horrid reality of the worm's death, worked through her flesh. She realized she was both exhausted and hungry, having foregone more than a half-hour's sleep and all dinner. The ground felt bouncy under her feet, but whether because it really was that way or because she was so tired, she didn't know. The sword was a heavy weight on her shoulder, making everything worse.

She left the tenuous path she was on and leaned against a tree. She couldn't see any sign of dawn coming. She was just going to get lost if she kept going. "Yimmil," she said. He came scampering back to the dim light and looked at her. "I've got to rest. Can you wake me up if…" she couldn't finish the thought. There were too many unpleasant possibilities. "Just wake me up if anyone comes."

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady," he said.

_Try to sleep_, she thought, tucking her tired body between the comforting thick roots of the tree. She kept the sword close at hand, and felt the gun at her hip. _Try not to think. Dawn will be here soon. Think when the light returns._ She clicked her flashlight off.

_So quiet_, she thought.

In the darkness, his voice whispered to her, as if coming from a great distance.

"Do you understand why I care for you?" She saw a bright light hovering in the darkness, and the shadow of Jareth, clutching at it, holding the vibrating orb tight in his hands. "Do you understand why you're precious to me? Every human soul is an architect, of flesh and imagination. You can do what the fae cannot. You have vitality. You have choice. Everything you touched in the Labyrinth, even with your eyes, took on a new color, a vibrant reality. You gave it depth and substance. You reminded me of what I'd forgotten."

"What is that in your hands?" she asked.

"You know very well what it is, " his echoing voice proclaimed. "It's a trap, an oubliette. And I can't hold it in check much longer."

_The dream-dance_, she thought. _My romantic Cinderella fantasy_. The memory of the bauble-ballroom, the Crystal Ballroom, was somehow fused in her memory with her desire for the Goblin King. She took a step closer to the shadowed figure in the gloom.

"Stop!" he said, the strain in his voice obvious. She heard him make a sound that was a muttered curse. "This is an old magic that I set loose on you, when you were first here. I used it as a weapon against you. And now I can't control what I set in motion. It came from me, and I'm the least of my kind, lacquered with the worst of yours."

She was surprised to hear such deep bitterness in his tone. _He actually believes that?_ she thought. _That can't be true. He's tried to protect me. He cares for me. He admitted that._

"I'm fond of you the way a glutton is fond of his meal!" he shouted at her, but she was ignoring him now. She could see the flicker of colors and light inside the crystal. Jareth's feet skidded across the ground, closer to her, and now he was cupping the crystal tight in both hands, restraining something that she couldn't see.

She took another step forward. She found she couldn't see his face clearly; the light in the crystal was too bright, too vibrant. "It's all right," she whispered. The flickering colors beckoned her. She reached out her hand, straining to touch them. "Don't you see? For me, time is running in reverse. The way forward is the way back. Before the junkyard, there was the dance. This is supposed to happen."

"I need you in the Labyrinth, not in the fairy ring!" Jareth panted. The orb dragged him forward. She could see him more clearly now, all the muscles of his arms and neck straining against the pull of the crystal in his hands.

"Let it go," she murmured, taking another step closer. The brilliant crystal escaped him at last, came hovering toward her. "I'm not afraid."

"I am!" His voice seemed to float further away, as if she were the surface of the water, the orb were a bubble of air, and he were a stone, sinking. "Remember," he called out, voice becoming faint. "Remember the rules that bind our people in thrall to one another. Eat nothing. Drink nothing. And safeguard your name!" And then his voice was gone, and there was only the sound of the music of the sphere, the dream, the crystal, which floated close to her, showing her the beauty of its depths.

_"Sarah,"_ she heard him call. _"Sarah!"_

* * *

She was there, a mirror of herself, wearing a red silk so fine it became pink in places against her skin. There were red beads across the bodice, their embroidery giving her some fragile modesty, revealing more than they hid. The drapery of her skirt clung to her thighs like a flow of blood, parting in a slit high up on the thigh, a dress for dancing. Black silk stockings, grabbing garters gripping tight to her legs helped finish her ensemble. Red lipstick, red nails, black eyeshadow and mascara seemed to make her eyes into pits of darkness. Her hair was slicked back and so severely pinned at the nape of her neck that she felt it like a physical pain, like Jareth's cruel and angry grip. Her shoes were the color of crimson sin. But there, over her shoulder, across her neck and down to her left wrist was one piece of jewelry, married tight to her flesh, under her dress. It was a twining single glove of silver-white leaves and silver ribbons, interlocked with strands of blond and brown hair. It cascaded, metal and diamond-brilliant, tendriling down to the tips of her fingers. It was her favour, she realized. _What does it mean?  
_  
_"A pale jewel, open, enclosed within your eyes."_

Her hands trembled as she looked and saw. Now she understood what it was. In her dance, her frightening and strange dance with the Goblin King at the ball, she'd worn something like this in her hair. She'd seen it in the mocking reflective mirrors in the guests' hands, and in the smooth walls of the ballroom's shell, but not remembered it until just now. _Finnvah's favour too_, she thought. The type of bracelet people used to get at nightclubs, and the wealth of illusory money the Goblin King spent on him. _Our favours are reconstructions or reminders of our party favors, those brief moments in our lives when our attention was focused absolutely and completely upon him._

_Let it take you, _her mind whispered. _You can't rely on any drug to ease your passage. There's only your will. Let it go. Let go. Go to him. _Her vision blurred, and she felt the crystal enfold her in an embrace that obliterated all thought.

_So beautiful_, she thought. _I'm beautiful._

"Yes-Ma'am-Lady?" she heard Yimmil say, but far, from a distance. She felt him grabbing at her, tiny goblin claws holding her by the hand tightly as if his tiny personage could keep her with him. "People coming." His voice was slightly frantic. "Where you going?"

A crude clay pin in the shape of a tiny goblin pinched a swath of fabric at her waist, and she was _there_.

Inside, darkness and smoke and mirrors. She wasn't sure when, or where, she had come in. It felt as if she'd always been here. The people (_the People_) were beautiful, shimmering flesh in a dark rainbow of colors. They were beaded, embroidered, jeweled, semitransparent. Every guest wore hokey plastic or rubber caricatures of human faces that sometimes revealed sharp teeth and dangerous eyes. Before, they had been like people masquerading as goblins. Now, they were something else, something much more dangerous; now they were fae masquerading as human. There were terrible configurations of appetites hidden under those masks, things that could be sensed but never clearly seen. They were cold, the ice so cold that a touch seems to burn. And they were beautiful.

It was like some art-deco pastiche, like a Klimt painting, if Klimt had gone through a noir phase. All gilded darkness.

There was a champagne glass in her hands. _Remember_, she told herself. _You must not eat or drink_. She put it down on one of the scattered tables, where the tiny lamplight defined it in silver and gold, releasing bubbles that cascaded and overflowed the glass with amber and gold beads.

Every breath was perfume. Everywhere was the smell of money, champagne, and sex. She felt giddy. She watched the dancers. Some danced together, and some alone, but every movement they made was a kind of perfection that drugged her. _All fae_, her mind whispered. _All Gentry. Be careful. Be careful_. When she moved, she knew herself clumsy by comparison, clomping like a stork in her beaded stiletto heels, while every movement they made was like perfect frozen melodies, the music of the jealous spheres. They danced in deep slow pulses from the belly terminating in upthrust hands, arcane hands making strange symbolic gestures which unwound, in jeweled and cufflinked wrists, to the hissing beat of the snare drum and the low thump of the bass.

She strolled slowly around the perimeter, near the bandstand where the full dance orchestra, all in gold suitwaists and gold-painted faces, were teasing out the beginning of the evening's entertainment. She could feel the floor spinning under her feet, but the dancers and the musicians maintained their postures, as if inertia worked by completely different rules for them.

She could feel the illusion pressing at her.

_My name is Sarah Williams, _she reminded herself, gasping. _My name is Sarah. My name is Sarah. _And there was someone she was looking for. Who was she looking for? _For Sarah. My name is Sarah._

Hadn't she been here before? She couldn't remember. But hadn't she? What was the memory? This… this was like a perfect scene from a Golden Age of Hollywood film, something starring Bette Davis or Marlene Dietrich or Rita Hayworth, only with no backstage, no back story, no camera angles to make or avoid, no cameras at all. _Am I in a movie?_ she wondered. But no, she wasn't an actress. She was… who was she? She stared down at her left arm. _Who am I? Oh. Sarah. And I'm looking… looking for the Goblin King. That's what this means. I'm looking for Jareth._ She tilted her arm back and forth in the chiaroscuro light, watching her silver lace glove twinkle and sparkle.

She followed the fractured light over her wrist and upon the dancers, admiring the assembled throng dancing the waltz and the tango and the Lindy Hop and stranger and more subtle dances in languid slow-motion, as if there were no time to worry about wasting at all. She realized there was a tiny bone-china dish in her hand with a selection of hors d'oeuvres and petit-four arranged in the shape of flowers.

_Thou shalt not eat. _She put it down on another nearby table and watched in fascination as the plate seemed to bloom in a cascade of sugared violet petals and tiny waterfowl.

There were mirrored columns that stretched upward into the infinity of the heavens, columns which caught the dancers and the dim electric light in scintillations bright as fireworks. She smelled incense and the sweet ache of desire in the air. There, in the center, was a parquet dancefloor, a raised dais, a pavilion red as blood, dark as shadow. She approached closer, picking her way through the dancers and the lovers at their scattered tables. A ghost light on that empty stage burned in that darkness, a light that gave no light. The light was... Her mouth opened, foolishly, seeing _him_.

He was wearing white, blazing white, a white that devoured and reflected all the colors and light of the guests and the party. A white suit, white tie, black shirt, black gloves, and a white leather trenchcoat with white-blue neon and white-sequined starbursts sewn into his shoulders and cuffs like tongues of ice-fire. He was looking at her from a knot of worshipping men and women, masked faces all wearing expressions of covetous possession. His long hair was bound back over his brow in a bronze chaplet of tiny bones and broken bird's wings. _Jareth_, her heart called out. _Jareth!_ She moved toward him and tripped on her heels, catching herself against a table. When she looked for him again, he was gone.

_Him, she thought. He is what I must have._ She smiled, caught her reflection in one of the pillars. Her smile was red, predatory, certain. It was a knowing smile that was reflected in the false faces of all the beautiful men and women at the party. She stood, and waited, watching. _Come to me. Come closer. I want you. I want you and no other._

He joined the dancers, standing out among them like a star in a black sky. First one partner, then another. All of them, the men and the women both, stroked and caught at him with light hands that demanded nothing but to touch him. She saw how he was desired. She saw how he was adored. He flickered among the dancers like the moon in a vast sunset cloudbank, disappearing only to reappear, his eyes like two stars, one blue as frozen hell, one black as the sea at night.

_Flame, come to moth. Let me fold you up in my red silk, white flame. Come closer to me now._

She hadn't realized she was holding her breath until she felt his presence behind her.

"I see you," he murmured, voice husky with desire and haughty with distance. "I see you… watching them." His hands pressed hard over her shoulders, pulling them back, down her arms, running his fingers like hard rain down her flesh. And oh, his touch was cold. It sent shivers through her. His hands folded over hers, tangled with them, gripped them and drew them up her body, crossed over her breast, holding her, having her hold herself, feeling her own warmth reflected back against her.

"I see you," he said, running his breath over her neck and against her ear. "I see you… watching me." She gasped for air and felt it like knives in the back of her throat, saw her breath mist like a scream in November. A corner of mirrored column caught and held their reflection in its face. His whiteness defined her redness, like the spoor of a predator's kill in the snow. He stared at her through their reflection and caught her gaze. "Wild creature, little doe," he said. "What are you watching for?" He arched his back, holding her, and she surrendered to him, let him catch her, move against her, move her body against his in a slow swaying rhythm. "Wild creature, little deer, don't watch. Dance. Dance with me."

"Yes," she said, swooning. The perfume of the room was him. The core of the fruit, the jewel in the lotus. She swayed with him slowly. His hand traveled down her thigh, burning her through his black gloves, her red skirt. She found herself trembling and weak in his arms, heart racing to feel his immodest, inhuman touch against her garter, and unwilling to stop him. He held her close against him, and she could feel him against the length of her body, icy-sweet and cold but for a core of heat that first repulsed and then fascinated her.

She tried to choke out some sort of protest, tried to break away, but he twirled her out to the length of their arms, and ricocheted her to him with a crash that dug her sequin-covered bodice into her breasts and made the breath leave her body. Her hands clung to his shoulders, lest she fall, and struggled to breathe with her forehead pressed against his lapel. He tilted her face up to his with two black-gloved fingers.

"Who are you?" he asked, and his other glove came hot against her back, her backless dress, a keyhole slot that he ruthlessly exploited, tracing his fingertips over her shoulderblades, over her neck, over her arm, over her favour.

He sang to her, low.

_Oh, I am damned_, she thought, delirious at the sound of his voice.

_Graven with diamonds in letters plain,  
There is written her fair neck round about,  
'Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,  
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.' _

"Where is your Caesar, little hind? Where is the one who wrapped his love-token round you yet left you here alone? Or are you a gift? Are you for me?"

"Who are _you?"_ she breathed, arching backward, pressing away from him with all the strength her arms could give. "Why aren't you masked?" He let her fold away from him, but their hips were still joined together, and his hands were there, tyrannically tight, at her waist. He let her fall backward, arching away from him, but unable to escape. His hands slid underneath her back, cradling her, bringing her back, running over her arms, and then he was dragging her upright, hands first around her wrists and then knotted against her knuckles, lifting her up, up, higher, so her shoulders strained in their sockets and only the toes of her ruby-red slippers touched the ground. Her face fell against her breast in the classic pose of submission.

"I?" He set her back down and manipulated her across the dancefloor, with a sure strong lead. The tango was a dance of desire and repulsion, and every time it seemed as though she might get free, he brought her in close again. "I haven't decided on a mask yet. But there are several here who have."

How long had they danced? They circled around and around each other, and she looked over her shoulder, and his, as he pointed out various masked figures. "There is La Belle Dame Sans Merci, also known as Femme Fatale, with her daughter Maggie-May Mrs. Robinson Cougar. And over there is Jack-the-Rascal, and Prince Charming, also known as Ken, with his consort Barbie. And there's her sister Pornstar, and Dracula Dance-Away-Lover, the Incubus." But whether he was giving actual names or the names of costumes, she couldn't tell. "I think I might like to wear the mask of the Rock God, someday. Someday soon."

"Or Goblin King," she said. He was leading her up the steps to the pavilion, lowering her aching body to the soft white recurved couch that seemed to be his place of honor.

"Goblin King?" he asked inquisitively, wrapping one arm around her shoulders, like a hostage-taker, or a lover. His other hand stroked her knee. She found it difficult to think. "What a repulsive notion. Do I look like a goblin? One of those low clay creatures?"

"No," she whispered. "You're no goblin. You're … fae."

"And you have no idea what that really means," he murmured to her, stroking his gloves down her face. "You mortals, you think fae are sweet little winged creatures, little benevolent darlings who grant wishes to the pure of heart. I am holding this fete to prove all of you wrong. This is the anodyne for cute. This is the antidote to adorable. This experience is for your edification." He displayed the crowd to her with a languid wave of his hand. "This is where we satisfy our appetites, and you satisfy your curiosity. This is a dance in the fairy ring."

She looked out onto the floor. The mirrored columns reflected the pageant happening there. She saw small entr'actes being performed between the masked players and the singular central figures with naked faces. A young man with antlers was chased and pulled down by a kirtled huntress and her dogs. A beautiful girl was enfolded in a batwing cloak and drained of blood. A saint was tied to the executioner's stake and burned alive. A woman slowly strangled a hero in the long coils of her hair. All of the props were obvious: the antlers were made of papier-mache, the fire was only light and shadow. But when these glittering pageants of mythic dissolution were each over, there was no more sign of the unmasked protagonists to be seen.

When his hands weren't occupied with loudly applauding each symbolic immolation, he kept them full, stroking her shoulder, trailing his fingers threateningly high into the hem of her sleeveless bodice, and advancing slowly over her knee up the inner curve of her thigh. Or he would press her face out to force her to watch the entertainments with him, the masques of destruction and desire and consumption which frightened and excited her. _This is what Persephone must have felt like_, she thought, _Sitting upon her obsidian throne, watching the parade of the damned with her ardent bridegroom close beside her_.

As if he could read her thoughts, or her desires, or as if he were intent on acting out his own symbolic rite, he took a pomegranate from a golden bowl offered by a gold-painted servant. Slicing it lengthwise with a sickle-shaped knife, he tilted the opened fruit into her empty hand. The red juice of the broken pips spread over her fingers like blood. A servant poured a champagne the color of hellebore into his glass. He touched her lower lip with his gloved fingertip, stroking down, smearing her lipstick over her chin, opening her mouth. He touched the rim of his glass to her parted lips.

"Eat with me," he murmured. "Drink with me." She shook her head slowly, as if underwater, but her eyes stayed locked on his. "Stay with me," he entreated her. "For I want you. I want to devour your heart with a sauce made of your tears, and turn your emerald eyes into jewels set in gold. I want to take all of you apart." His voice was so gentle, so terrifying. "I want to eat you. I want to hurt you. I want to fuck you." His eyes transfixed her. "Give yourself to _me_, mortal woman, and I will show you pleasures you've only imagined," he coaxed darkly, tilting the glass up. Her throat was open, and dry as sand. His smile was very, very cruel. "Drink."

In the moment before she would have drowned in his eyes and his words and his profane liquour, a stranger approached their paired couch and bowed gracefully before them, one long leg stretched out before him, the other bent back low at a dancer's angle. "Most Dread Host of the Revel," the stranger said. "I offer you greetings."

"Finnvah," Sarah gasped, and choked, the unswallowed sip of green champagne trickling out of the corner of her mouth.

* * *

_I am pimping out DarkFaeJareth, and I take payment in reviews. *rubs fingers and thumb together* Who wants a taste of the forbidden? Who wants a sip of smexy delight?_

_And you know, Sarah may have made a mistake, entering the fairy ring so eagerly, but aren't we glad she did? Imagine Labyrinth without the Crystal Ball. It would be sad and wrong._

_The song sung to Sarah is Thomas Wyatt's "Whoso List to Hunt," a poem written about the elusive, sexy, doomed Anne Boleyn. _

_The title of this chapter refers to one of the Tarot cards of the Minor Arcana, a volatile, passionate master of the social and sexual revels who holds court in the mutable sea. It's an appropriate symbol for Jareth as Master of the Revel.  
_

_RosieLilyIce93: Is this what you were looking for? All three in the same place?_  
_Jetredgirl, Fanny, Honoria: More is more. More Jareth is more Jareth. *sexglitterbombpoof*_

I know this update comes a little ahead of schedule, but Halloween is reserved for our own personal revels. Enjoy this and enjoy that!  


_Appreciation for this chapter should also be directed to my beta, Nyllewell, who makes everything a bit more glamorous and fun._

* * *

**Next… Chapter 9: "The Knight of Swords"**


	9. The Knight of Swords

**The Knight of Swords**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter 9:**

"Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered"—Sinead O'Connor  
"Taste in Men"—Placebo  
"Burn"—The Cure, The Crow Soundtrack

* * *

She stared at Finnvah. In comparison with all the other guests, he cut a shabby figure in his red wool coat and stained cargo pants, but he wore his homely garb with ease and grace. He had a mask that was nothing but a strip of black fabric with eyeholes roughly gouged out. _Finnvarrah_, she thought. _Help me_.

But he wasn't paying any attention to her. He had eyes only for the one beside her.

"You," Jareth said coldly, "have interrupted my play." He tossed the wasted champagne-glass at Finnvah's dull boots, where it shattered. Crawling caterpillars and tender green shoots bloomed there. His grip on Sarah's neck tightened possessively. Sarah glanced at Finnvah, and beyond him, at the gathered Gentry. They had been watching Jareth toy with her, the way they had watched all the other rites of defilement and predation provided at the dance. Her face flushed with embarrassment. She was only part of their entertainment.

"Still…" a tilt of the head, "You are interesting. Approach," Jareth commanded Finnvah. "Let me see you." Finnvah came up the steps, slowly, as if drawn by an invisible cord. He stood in front of them. "Kneel," said Jareth, stretching out his hand.

"Inexorable one," Finnvah said, with the hurried manner of a schoolboy trying to deliver a recitation before he can forget it, "I have come to-"

"Kneel." Jareth pressed his hand down, the subtle gesture of his fingers very like the obscure configurations of the fae dancers. Finn's knees trembled and he gasped, coming down to rest on one knee, his eyes all for the man in white. "Good. That's better."

Sarah's tongue burned with the taste of the champagne she'd spit out. She had planned to run away from her keeper, this Jareth whose hand was so strong, and so cold on her, while he was distracted, but she found she couldn't move. And it wasn't his touch on her body, and it wasn't a spell on her… she was only captivated by the spectacle of watching Jareth seduce his prey.

Jareth reached forward to the back of Finnvah's neck and drew loose the knot of his mask. "You'll find better welcome here, young one, if you were properly dressed. Isn't it so?"

"No," Finnvah whispered, but the breath sounded like _yes_. Clutching the fabric over his brow, Jareth drew the mask off and down his face. As he touched him, Finnvah was transformed. The mask became black molded plastic, which first covered and then disclosed his eyes. His lids were painted with gilt and kohl, his hair was powdered in gold dust so thick that it coated his horns and made the crown of his head into a halo. In a burst of glitter, his shabby clothes changed into the gauzy dark blue silks of a pasha's catamite, vest and pants that seemed to reveal more than they covered. But his favour was still there, on his arm, a netted cage of gold ribbons and rosettes of the same poison-green as the champagne. "Better," said Jareth, stroking his face and Finnvah bent to his hand, captured by that touch. "Little one, you could be one of us. Can anything in the mortal world compare? Take joy in what you are. Take what you want from mortal women, mortal men. This is your birthright. Leave your heart behind. Your heart is a snare. Stay with _us_."

Finnvah's eyes glowed gold as his hair and his favour, and Sarah thought she could see his soul being drawn out through his eyes, discarded as easily as his mask. She made a sound of protest, which became a sound of pain as Jareth's hand tightened on her, cutting off the blood to her brain, making her see spots.

It was a small sound, but it was enough. Finnvah's eyes flickered to her, and she felt the full force of his heat, his power. She saw beneath his skin, saw what he might be, without his humanity. He would be terrible, and beautiful. And then Finn's eyes were gentle, human, recognizing her, remembering himself.

"No," he said, drawing away. "Terrifying Lord, no." He stood up, and was wearing his own clothing again. "This may be your domain, but I serve one greater than you. And it's by his command that I've come, and by his command that I will leave again."

"I don't care for your tone," Jareth stood, dragging Sarah up beside him. The pomegranate fell from her hand, shell down, and trundled away like a giant golden-red pill-bug.

"And the lord I serve despises dishonest dealings in nearly equal measure." Finnvah smiled, with some effort. "I came to collect a certain piece of property who has wandered here, expressly against his will, not to kiss your ring or other places less savory." He pointed at Sarah, keeping his eyes on Jareth, his expression coldly accusatory. "That baggage you've trifled with is the rightful property of the King of the Labyrinth. I've come to take her back to him."

The Lord of the Revels laughed, the skin of his face pulling back so that Sarah thought she could see a grinning skull. "King of the Labyrinth? What nonsense." He paused, and manipulated Sarah's neck so that she sprawled at his feet. "The Labyrinth is no kingdom. It's only a door, full of trash and trouble."

"You might be surprised, Fearsome Sir, of what transpires Above and Below while you and the Gentry disport with your victims."

"Would I?" A lip snarled in disdain. "I wonder."

Finnvah flicked back his coat from his hip, revealing his iron sword, keeping it in reach, and extended a hand to Sarah. "Come with me," he said. "I don't belong to this one, and neither do you." Jareth's fingers scraped over Sarah's hair, petting her like a restive dog. And she was like a dog. She clung to Jareth's white trousers, afraid to take Finnvah's outstretched hand.

"Come on now," Finnvah said coaxingly, the way one spoke to a frightened animal. "Come with me. You can't stay here. And he can't hurt you, unless you let him."

She met his eyes, finally, full of warning sympathy. And he took his hand and tapped it meaningfully over his breastbone.

She stared up at Jareth, and then back at Finnvah. He tapped his chest again. Suddenly she understood. No amulet. There were two pieces of regalia she'd never seen the Goblin King without—his gloves, and his amulet. This wasn't him. This wasn't Jareth. _It couldn't be. Could it?_

It might not have been much, but that small bit of doubt freed Sarah. She reached out and took Finnvah's hand.

He pulled her up, wrapped a warm arm around her and led her away. She couldn't help looking over her shoulder at the white-clad fae man behind her. His face was full of regret…and hunger, his eyes deep pits that burned into her. Once again she could imagine a horrible skull just under the skin, grinning and beckoning to her.

She stumbled on the steps, wanting to run, but Finnvah restrained her. He kept his arm around her, forcing her to move slowly. "Don't run," he said quietly. "You must never run from anything immortal. It only attracts their attention." She could feel him trembling. He was as frightened as she was. "Did you eat anything? Drink anything? Accept any gifts?" His voice was anxious, and he kept his head up, constantly scanning the room, cutting through the dancers who attempted to block their way. No one attempted to touch them, though. _It's the iron sword_, she thought. _Like a talisman, or a force-field._

"No. Where are we?" she asked, voice quavering. "What is this place?"

"It's a faerie ring," he said. "A party for the Gentry. A part of Faerie. It's not so much a place as a state of mind. Or not so much a state of mind as it is a dodgeball cannon."

"What?"

"Never mind." He changed course through the crowd. "It's all glamour and teeth. Mortals come here and get eaten. You've been here three days at least. Maybe longer. _He_ sent me to find you."

_Three days?_ Sarah swallowed nervously, trying very hard not to search the room for a familiar glimpse of white. "Who…who was that?" Sarah finally managed to ask. It seemed as though the party had gotten larger, much larger. It seemed to take ages to cross the floor she had crossed in only moments with her now-unknown dance partner.

"I don't know," Finnvah said. "But it wasn't him. Maybe a doppleganger, or a reflection, or some sort of aspect or shade of him. But it wasn't him. It couldn't be." But whether Finn truly knew, or if he was attempting to convince himself, Sarah wasn't certain. "He'd never ravish you for entertainment," Finnvah said more confidently.

He darted a quick glance down to Sarah, and she saw him lose that confidence. "Unless you wanted him to." There was equal parts query and accusation in his tone, especially since Sarah couldn't find the strength to lie or defend her actions. "Gods Above and Below, you pretty idiot. Half of this is your fault. The Gentry have appetites, but they only borrow the will to satisfy themselves. And you've lent them all plenty of willpower and artistic rapine." He navigated them through a tight cluster of masked figures dressing themselves in scarves made of human hair, human skin. "Love your décor, though. You've definitely got a gift for stage dressing." He paused, keeping their backs against one of the mirrored columns, as he stood on tiptoe to get his bearings over the assembled throng, and as he did, Sarah caught sight of one of the many entertainments in the room.

A human man, so skinny his ribs were exposed, was bound to the torturer's wheel, and spun in lazy circles. The Gentry raked their sharp nails over his naked flesh, drawing ghoulish designs in blood and spit as he cried out in agony and ecstasy, his face contorting between rapture and pain. Sarah hid her face in her hands and wept.

"Oh. Hey now. Don't do that." Finn plucked a napkin from a nearby table and scrubbed her hands clean and daubed at her running mascara and smeared lipstick. "Sorry. Your line was supposed to be, 'Fuck _you_ very much, Finnvah, you were two seconds away from giving him a lap-dance,' and then you'd scowl and be mad instead of afraid." He held the napkin to her nose, reminding her of what her father had done when she was a child. "Blow. I don't want you using my clothes for Kleenex again."

She did, and he tossed the napkin back to the table. "That'll be a fine Mandylion for whoever picks it up next," Finn said with satisfaction.

"How much trouble are we in?" Sarah asked, feeling better, the way she always did after the brief storms of her tears.

"Mmm, I'd say it's pretty bad, but I've been in tighter scrapes than this. We'll be okay. Can you walk? Come on." He tugged her through the crowd again.

"What are they?" Sarah asked, walking as quickly as she could without running. "Finnvah, what are the Gentry really?"

"At the Red Branch, we call them God's Second Breath. He breathed once into the clay of mankind, wakening them to life. But not all of that breath was used up in their creation. The extra became the fae." He pursed his lips. "That's only one story. From what I've observed, humanity is flesh and soul, but the fae are like air and fire. You can feel the wind when it hurtles against you, and feel the fire when it burns you, but there's no core of substance to it. They are fire, and fire always needs fuel." They crept slowly around a gathering of Gentry who were participating in one of the pageants. Sarah tried to close her ears to the sound of a weak human voice pleading for mercy in one breath and begging for more with another.

"But the King of the Labyrinth is different," Sarah reminded him, hopefully.

"Oh yes," but his voice held a touch of doubt. "There's some sort of touch of humanity in him. Rare, but not unheard-of. Sometimes the Gentry are constructed that way, and sometimes I suppose they get a little mutated or defiled in the process of coming to be."

"Born that way?" Sarah asked.

"Never born, and never dying. They bleed and blend into one another, immortal, dissolving down into their component pieces and arising again fresh and renewed. Like… archetypes, or classic characters. Like the phoenix. Never born, never dying, but constantly changing. And humanity is just fuel for their fire, or a vacuum which their nature rushes to fill."

"Demons," Sarah whispered with a shudder, remembering the feel of cold, hard hands on her body.

"Sometimes, yes, I wouldn't be surprised. Maybe the host of this party is just a broken-off bit of our King's essential nature. Connected, related, reflected, but not the same at all. There must be some rule about the fae meeting themselves, or he would have come here to fetch you out." He gave her a significant look. "He was worried when he couldn't find you."

"I was stupid," Sarah said sadly. "He told me it was a trap, but I didn't listen. I just wanted to be with him. Stupid."

"Well, I was stupid to let you go off alone," he said grimly. "But I, unlike certain other people—" he scanned the room again on tiptoe, and picked a new direction, "—_listen_ when someone says no." He smiled impudently at her. "And speaking of other stupid choices-I got to the Bog of Eternal Stench last night and was dumb enough to light a match." His smile became a grin. "Almost singed my eyebrows off. Hoo-wee, what a fireball!"

She laughed, and the fae guests, with their terrifying masks and faces, backed away, as if her laughter were a gross violation of propriety. Sarah scrutinized them, making faces under their false faces, and laughed harder. Finnvah joined her. "So do you have any suggestions as to how to get out of here?" he asked.

"When I was here, before, I found the outer wall and ran a chair through it. It got the job done." She bit her lower lip and examined the room, and caught the gaze of sheer admiration Finnvah gave her in a reflection. "But there aren't any edges here," she whined, but was too tired to change her tone. "It just goes on and on!" Sarah said. "One way to get out of a fairy ring is to have someone stand just outside, and reach in and pull the trapped dancer out. Is that what you're doing?"

"Point to you, Sarah," said Finnvah. "You know your lore better than Gary Gygax."

"So pull already!" Sarah said.

"I don't know where I came in!" he said. "How can I pull you out through the ring if I can't figure out where the ring ends? This is your fantasy. Are there any borders at all? Do you really want to leave?"

"I didn't before, but I do now." She paused, eyes focusing on a possible escape route. The columns and the chandeliers glimmered and flashed, hung low. She pointed. "The only wall I can see is the floor or the roof. Can we climb out? Up the columns?"

"I don't think much of your chances there. In your shoes, you'd never get a good grip. Without them, your feet would get slashed to bacon. Unless…" He peeked up and over the crowd again. Sarah followed his gaze and groaned. "No way," she said.

"Unless you have a better option," Finnvah said grimly. They stared at the same thing, the velvet draperies of the pavilion, the gabled roof that seemed to terminate in the darkness "Okay," she said, taking a deep breath. "We'll climb it."

"No," said Finnvah. "_You_ will. I'll need to distract _him_."

"I'm not going to leave you alone again," Sarah said. "I won't, Finnvah."

"There's the contrary brat I like so much," Finnvah said merrily. "But you will, and I'll tell you why. The membrane that encloses this place is permeable. And I'm a halfway person and only halfway here. It's much easier for me to leave alone than when I'm lugging your weight. And I've got my Cold Iron with me." His eyes flashed golden at her. "You'll do it," he said. "I'll be right behind you. And turnabout being fair play," he said, and kissed her lips gently. "Don't argue." He gave her a smack on the butt, which made her yelp. "Get going."

She pushed through the crowd alone. Hands clutched at her and slid away again, drawn back instead to the pageants in which they participated. She expected, at any moment, for the Gentry to thrust her in the middle of a circle, to make her once more the center of their rapacious attention. But then they stopped grabbing at her, and instead turned their sight beyond her. She cast a glance backward. Finnvah had drawn his sword. It glowed white-blue in the oppressive and beautiful darkness, making light and clarity. The counterpoint to his light was the Host of the Revels, under his canopy of blood.

"You!" She heard Finnvah shout. The crowd opened to let him through. Finn was cutting through the Gordian Knot of Gentry and their victims. His sword sang a song of gleeful mayhem as it sliced through air and shadow. The revelers fled on either side of him, making a ravine of voyeurs. They were hemmed in now, two sides to the defile: the white King and the red Knight. "Come on, you!" Finnvah cried. "Let's see how strong you are against someone who fights back!" The music stuttered for a moment, and came to an abrupt end.

The Host stood. Two gold-painted slaves removed his white coat, his black gloves. His hands were long and sharp and tipped with fingernails like diamond needles, like claws. He seemed all eyes and teeth and grasping and terrifying power. The Lord of the Revels pointed that terrible hand at Finnvah. "As you wish, sub-creature." He advanced on the dark-skinned man in red.

Sarah knew this was the moment. Nobody was watching her now. She moved to the periphery of the crowd. The rest of the space of the dance-hall was empty, and wavered around the edges—the spectacle that captured everyone's attention now was the battle between Finnvah and his antagonist. And although she was walking, remembering Finnvah's advice against running, it only took her a few moments to reach the pavilion. She grabbed a length of velvet curtain in her two hands, and jerked it hard. It seemed to be firmly anchored.

Her skirt was going to be a problem. She folded it up over her waist and tied it there with her sash, hands running briefly over the little clay pin.

_Out_, she thought. _Out. Up and out_. She focused on her task, grabbed the velvet drape in both hands, and began to climb.

At first it was difficult to get good purchase—the velvet slithered under her fingers, nudged softly between her legs. But her shoes, so impractical for walking, were like climber's crampons, the heels tearing easily through the velvet. After a few difficult and hopeless moments, she scaled the drapery as easily as a cat up a screen door.

She reached the lip of the roof and, like she had in the Escher maze, rolled herself up onto it. She could hear the sounds of fighting below. _Don't look back_, she told herself. _Don't look back. Only look forward._

But she couldn't help herself. She turned to see, as Orpheus had.

It was a magnificent battle. They were equally matched, the Host of the Revels and the hero in red. Finnvah had length of reach with his sword, and thrust sharp sweeps forward. But his antagonist was faster, sidestepping, bending, arching away from the cold iron sword with a dancer's precision. When Finnvah put his strength into the centrifugal motion of his weapon, his antagonist darted in, raking his claws close, too close, to Finn's vulnerable face and neck. She saw that the back of Finnvah's coat had four diagonal slashes across the back, but if he was bleeding, it didn't show. They careened and separated down the long length of the room, hammer and tongs.

Finnvah wasn't trying to win, she realized. He was just trying to buy time. And, although he seemed sure and strong, she could see that unlike his opponent, he would tire. When that happened, when he couldn't raise his heavy blade again, he would die.

"Jareth!" she screamed. "Stop!"

All eyes turned to her, including his. In that moment, committed to his swing, the tip of Finnvah's blade opened a gash on the fae man's cheek. He cursed at Finnvah in a shrieking, hissing language and held a hand to his bleeding face, a small stream of steam hissing from the wound. Finn was stunned by his unexpected success, staring at his sword in brief shock. A moment before he could press his advantage, his antagonist jumped away, turned to the pavilion, and ran toward her—not in retreat, but with a single-minded purpose of murder gleaming in his eyes, those dark, soulless pits.

_Oh, no_, Sarah thought, and began to climb the arching roof. _Oh, no. Oh shit_. Her heels slipped and caught on the smooth surface of the black tiles. She felt one of her stockings run and rip, but her naked skin helped her get a better grip as she inch-wormed up.

The ceiling was just above her, the arch of the roof of the fairy ring. She pounded at it with her fist. Its texture was grainy, gritty. She clawed at it with her hands and some of it came pelting down like a shower of dry rain, like clay. Earth. It was made of earth. She used both of her hands to dig, covering herself with dirt, coughing as some of the grit landed in her nose and mouth.

Over the lip of the pavilion, two long-fingered, taloned hands appeared. And then a face, a bleeding face. She dug faster. The loose soil began to pour in like sand through an hourglass. Her fingers were raw and her nails broken painfully off at the quick, but she continued to dig, for her doom was approaching. The Host of the Revels, her dance-partner, was on the roof.

"And where are _you_ going?" he snarled cheerfully. He reached the eaves of the peaked roof and began to climb up to her. "There's nowhere for you to hide from me, mortal woman. There's only the dance. So let's dance. Come let me dance with you!" He reached out and grabbed for her ankle. She stomped down with her other heel, jabbing deep into his wrist, making him let go, taking away one of the weapons in his arsenal.

_The sky is falling_, she thought idiotically, but the hole she'd dug in the roof was spreading like an avalanche, burying everything below in a snowfall of dirt. She thought she could see moonlight just above. Just above was out, was freedom. But she'd never make it.

"Sarah!" she heard a voice say. "Sarah, grab on!" The moonlight—it was Jareth. The real Jareth.

Two green-gloved hands were extended down to her, out of the cascade of the fairy-ring's burial. She reached up for them, and they seized her by her wrists. The fae creature hissed and cursed at her, and she kicked out at his face, making contact with his chin. His head rocked back, and he slid back down the tiled roof.

The last thing she saw as Jareth lifted her out and away was Finnvah, giving her a saucy salute and jamming his blade into the floorboards. They gaped wide for him, and he jumped down, and through, and out.

* * *

"Shhh, Jareth murmured, plucking her up from the earth like a flower, quieting her panic with his reassuring presence. "Shh. Don't be afraid. I have you."

"Finnvah!" she said, choking on the name, coughing up a flowerbed's worth of dirt. "Yimmil!" She blinked but couldn't see. She'd been buried alive.

"Fine. They're fine. You're all out. All of you, free."

Those words, that voice, should have frightened her after where she'd just been, but they didn't. His embrace was immensely comforting. He was holding her in his arms, carrying her weight against his lap. Unable to help herself, unable to do anything else, she nuzzled into his shoulder. She could smell him, sandalwood and rain. She could feel him, warm and alive. _Don't let me go_, she thought. _Jareth, don't let me go_.

"Free. And there's no harm done. No harm." A thorn of anxiety in his voice, as if he were trying to reassure himself as much as her. She coughed out more dust, and he brushed more earth out of her hair, shook it out of her clothing. Sarah wiggled her foot. She'd lost a shoe. It seemed a small price to pay. She clung to him, opening her eyes. His coat was green now, faintly luminous, the delicate shade of the firefly's love-note, and his amulet gleamed in the folds of his bruise-colored shirt. He ran his hands over her arms, and she shuddered with the memory of her dance with his double. But he seemed satisfied, after looking in her eyes, that his frightened prediction was accurate—she was unhurt.

But he wasn't. There was a dull pink slash high up on his cheekbone, the scar of an old, old wound.

She froze, looking at him. He tried to brush more dirt from her face but she grabbed his hand.

"Don't," he said, as she tucked her fingers into the fold of his glove cuff, but he made no move to stop her, and his voice was sad. "Don't look."

She kept her eyes open and tugged gently at each finger of his glove. His hand clenched suddenly. She waited until he opened his hand again for her, let her finish the job of peeling the leather away from his skin.

His hand was warm, but it wasn't human. Long-fingered, the ring and middle finger the same length, it was pale and slightly pruned from their encasement in leather. His fingertips ended in talons that seemed to be extensions of his skin. These fingertips were translucently pale as keratin. Not the talons of an owl, or the fingers of a man, but something in-between. These were the claws of a predator, sharp enough to tear flesh, and draw blood. They were the hands of the Inexorable One who also had Jareth's face. They were one and the same.

"Put me down," Sarah whispered. "Let me go, you monster."

* * *

_Jareth has some explaining to do. Trouble is, there was never no fae nowhere who gave nobody a straight answer. Is he guilty? Is he innocent? Is Sarah likely to care either way, given the evidence against him? _

_The Knight of Swords, one of the Minor Arcana of the Tarot Deck, is a messenger who brings dire but true news in a way that can dismay the listener. It's a suitable card for Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix, halfbreed fae, bearer of an iron blade and crucial but bummer tidings._

_"It's not a [time machine] so much as it is a dodgeball cannon." is a line cribbed from __Sealab 2021__. And "Never run from anything immortal—it only attracts their attention" plus the above author's commentary are from __The Last Unicorn__. Finnvah has not come up with these lines on his own—he himself is quoting Sealab and Beagle, because his upbringing was strictly in line with Gen-X principles of irony and pop-culture references. All Gen-Xers have a little drop of fae juice in their eyes. Brilliant, frightening creatures._

_Guest: I wish you'd give me your name so I could thank you personally for your praise. It means so much to me. _  
_artseblis: Swoon away! Finnvah will catch you. Or, you know… someone else will._  
_irgroomer: Submit away! Nobody's lookin'! Eat that thing! Drink that other thing! What's the worst that could happen?_  
_HAL-1138: Yes, tuck that into your personal memory cold storage for reheating later. :D_  
_BT: You're killing me with kindness!_  
_Kaytori: You've got a good eye. A very good eye. Be careful that some fae doesn't try to wear it as a tie-tack._  
_Thea: What direction? Up. I'm going up. It's sketchy as hell down in the Fairy Ring._  
_Aleta, Fanny, Honoria, and RosieLilyIce: Huzzah indeed for DarkFaeJareth! I keep him beside my desk. He whispers to me. He tells me to do… things to Sarah. He is so good at being Very Bad. I try not to listen._

_This chapter owes its sexier bits to my beta Nyllewell, who also likes to take a walk on the wild side when given proper inducement. Thank you, beta! Champagne?_

* * *

**Next… Chapter 10: "The King's Body Politic"**


	10. The King's Body Politic

**The King's Body Politic  
**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter 10**

"The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove" -Dead Can Dance  
"Sea Legs" -The Shins  
"Nature Boy" -David Bowie

* * *

"Let me go!" she insisted, struggling away from him.

His face became the cold impersonal mask of the King. "As you wish." He rolled her out of his embrace and took a step back from her as she sprawled on the ground. "It's all one to me." He flexed his inhuman, naked claws, and glanced at his glove tight in her hand, but didn't demand it back. Sarah swayed, dizzily, trying to hold on to a floor that wanted to toss her wide. She could feel the earth under her fingers, could feel more of it gritty against her scalp and, God help her, under her clothes and even in her stupid socks.

Sarah could see the place where she'd emerged. It looked like a declogged drainpipe, full of glittering flotsam and jetsam mixed with loose soil. She lay on her back, and stretched herself out so she didn't have to see him. There was a mural on the ceiling that she could see by the light of his witchfire coat. It was painted and carved into the domed ceiling of this little enclosure of earth and tree-roots: a demon of hell with an owl's face who was presiding over a vast landscape of banqueting-tables and kitchens, where human souls were flayed and stewed and eaten and excreted by the capering and mercurial denizens of the pit, only to begin the process again. There was nothing else but him to see. There was no sky. No moon, no sun, no stars. Everything was a series of interlocked boxes, cages, rooms, and she was here, with the beast.

"The Fairy Ring," Jareth intoned, "Is both the feast and the eater. And when we've eaten the dreams, desires, sensations and images of living mankind, the food can run away, as unharmed as a well-milked cow."

"That's disgusting," Sarah said, angrily. The mural moved under her eyes, and she watched the pale souls boiling in their cook-pots.

"You want to use the word disgusting?" Jareth snarled, "I could describe the human digestive process in rather horrific detail."

Sarah's mouth skewed and she peeked out from behind her sleeve. "Fair point."

"I," he said, a bit mollified by her response, "created that Fairy Ring when I was much younger. When I was proud and hungry. Part of my essence is there, cut off from my will and myself, luring and eating and consorting with the other fae, existing outside of time, while I languish here. It exists whether I want it to or not. Humanity devise their own temptations, their own preparations and ravishments. They come, and they go."

_Demons_, she thought grimly. _Parasites. But… more than that_. She had to admit that there was more than that. What demon would give delight and the fulfillment of dreams? And Jareth, as frightening as his pure, fae aspect was—that cruel, devouring, rapacious aspect—had now saved her soul and body twice over. Hadn't he?

"It really wasn't just a peach." Jareth mused as he glanced down at her.

_"It wasn't just a peach. _You tricked me into eating it, and it made some sort of attachment between us, and you've been nibbling at me ever since." She covered her eyes with her arm. The scent of her favour, the scent of him, filled her nose, murmured softly to her spinning mind. Out of the corner of her sleeve, she could see his boots, crocus-purple, buffed to a liquid shine. "You already caught me up in the ring. When I ate the peach. You've been feeding on me for years," she said. She couldn't help but look at her arms and hands, almost expecting to see some proof of her accusation. "Even if you have no power over me?"

"I have all the power over you that you allow," he acknowledged. "And you've allowed me quite a bit."

"So that's why you warned me not to eat. To keep me away from that other you, that other ring. You want me all for yourself, right here." She didn't know how to feel. Part of her was elated to think that he cared enough to want to possess her. The other part was utterly aggrieved with him for failing to secure her explicit consent. She had no doubts now that the "eating" he described was fraught with danger to her soul, or her personality, or her sanity. "How could you, Jareth?"

"Oh, yes, this is all happening to _you_," Jareth drawled. "As if it's something I've done to you and not something you _chose_." He stepped away from her and she heard the sound of digging. She moved her arm and watched him paw through the earth, like a man searching for his wedding-ring down a sewer grating. The faces he was making as he touched various things in the earth-spill were funny, but she didn't feel like laughing. He pulled up a bowl of glittering fruit, a clay pin, her shoe, a rope of diamonds, and lastly, a bottle of wine that he uncorked and smelled with relish before shoving the stopper back in. He glanced over at her and she turned abruptly, irritated at having been caught looking.

"I admit," he said, stowing some of his plunder in inner pockets of his green coat—reminding her painfully and regretfully of Finnvah—"That I ate what you provided. There were times when you spread a banquet of sex and beauty before me. You spread a table and you spread your legs. Could I be blamed for being tempted? Did I rape you? Did I bite? No. _Not even when you invited me to._ And instead of being praised for my abstemiousness, you're scolding me like I was a child with his fingers in the jam-jar. That makes me feel rather cross." He glared, eyes burning with intensity. "It's always the same with you, Sarah." Her name sounded like a curse on his lips. "Nothing I do is ever enough for you." The words were cold and chilling, like ice penetrating her skin and she shuddered.

"You're not human," Sarah objected, but she knew she was whining again. And she was lying on her back like a baby exhausted from a tantrum. She was exhausted suddenly, without enough energy to sit up and face this…creature before her.

"To use _le mot juste_, Sarah, 'Duh.'" He thrust his chest forward and drew the universal sign for "cuckoo" against his temple. "Of course I'm not human," Jareth replied indulgently, like one would to a child. Sarah let her head roll toward him, and he crouched down,_ tsking_. "You knew from the beginning that I wasn't a human man. And yet, you've always taken certain things for granted about me." He crossed his arms in a spasm of pique. "Is it my fault that my reality doesn't match your expectations?"

"Well… no," she admitted, "But you've never helped me know you, even a little bit. You're like trying to solve a riddle in a foreign language. You're so obscure. You know more about me than I know about you. You've admitted to watching me. Stalking me." Her voice trembled a little considering the double-meaning of her next words. "Eating me."

"Look at me, Sarah." He reached out to her; his hand was warm on her wrist, making her stand as he did. Her pride refused to try to force the issue, but she was still drawn to her feet. His grip was strong and unbreakable. She knew that now from experience. "Look at me? See me for what I am."

She looked. She took a long look, from his moss-fuzzy pants, still and always pornographically tight, past his ungloved hand, up to the hip-hugging belt of braided leather, past his glow-worm jacket lapels, and to his amulet, gleaming between the folds of his low-wrapped purple shirt. But her eyes wouldn't go higher. Her eyes were drawn to his naked inhuman hand. He offered it to her, palm down, unthreatening, for her inspection.

It wasn't that terrible, really. But now the reality of his physical difference was all intermixed with the dream of the Fairy Ring, and spoiled by the knowledge that he and the Host of the Revels were somehow both the same. If she'd seen this, as a girl, would she have been frightened? Disgusted? Certainly forewarned, and perhaps not so eager to desire the mysterious and sexy Goblin King. But it was only uncanny. Like his strange eyes, it was something that was felt rather than perceived. His gloved hand stroked up her green leather sleeve, grasped her shoulder. She held his green glove between her fists, trying to pull it apart.

"I wish…" he said, raking those fingers up her collar and then across her throat, finally resting them against her lips… "I wish I could promise never to hurt you. But the Labyrinth is a place for attaining wisdom, and pain is the price of knowledge." She felt those talon-barbs prickle her mouth, but he didn't hurt her. His face held hunger, and regret. It was the same expression of the Host of the Revels, who was also Jareth. But here, she felt the weight of the sadness in his eyes, felt the self-discipline of his will. "The Labyrinth is dangerous. You are mortal, and I am King. I am responsible for what happens here, whether I wish to be or not. And I shouldn't..." He compressed his mouth to a thin line, holding back his thought, and drew his hand into a fist against his amulet. "May I have my glove back?"

"I'll trade it for my shoe," Sarah said calmly. Jareth rolled his eyes and picked it up, tapping the dirt out of it. "Allow me," he said, kneeling in front of her. She balanced one hand on his shoulder as he fitted her clog back on her foot. "There, Cinderella." He stood in front of her and handed her the clay pin. "I believe this also belongs to you."

"Thanks," Sarah said, uncertainly. She shoved the pin into her pocket and handed him his glove. Instead of putting it on, he stripped off the other and stuffed the pair into his belt.

He turned his back on her and moved in the utter darkness, until the light of his coat revealed the deep roots of a massive tree. He tapped it once, petting it, and the thick terminal branches spread wide, revealing a narrow flight of twisting impossible wooden stairs, leading up. "This way."

"I want to know," Sarah began, ducking under the lintel of roots, and following him up the steep steps. "I _want_ to know more about you. You owe me that." His coat was torchwood, a dim lamp that gave just enough luminescence to see by.

"And I'm about to show you," Jareth said calmly. "I'm going to try. But it's almost impossible for the fae to give humans answers they'll accept." His voice echoed in the long tunnel of wood. He was silent, but the long upward passageway was a sounding-chamber, reverberating with his words. His coat burned brighter, casting light and shadow on the tunnel's carved and painted wall. There was a story inscribed there. Jareth tripped up the steps light as a bubble, and she had to follow him and look quickly, very quickly, to see the story in the wake of his transient light. There was no writing, but the colored inscriptions had a voice, and that voice was very clear to Sarah.

Once upon a time there was a young fae, just a vague collection of interests and fascinations, who came to this Labyrinth. This creature, shown there in an amorphous state, had the body of an owl and the face of a child. It was a child. It was a faelet, just beginning to take a distinct shape and form. He was most pleased by things that, like himself, weren't one thing nor fully the other. And the Labyrinth was attractive, a middle ground between what was and what could be. The Labyrinth was full of that emptiness that mortals call possibility. The faelet explored and examined the place, making and unmaking, shaping and corroding and building. He flew to peck at and peruse humankind, and then soared down again to the lower depths of the earth beyond known reality, but he always paused in the un-kingdom of the Labyrinth, in the threshold space, to see and to do and _to be_. Before he even realized what had happened, he'd claimed the space as his own, made it an extension of his flickering nascent self.

In the moment between opening and closing his eyes, the faelet became aware that a daunting horde of goblins had taken refuge in his Labyrinth, and were quickly wreaking havoc with all his unfinished dreams and desires. They had laid rough and rude claim to his special place, and had the strength to keep it, being linear and solid where he was chaotic and ephemeral.

The fae child was coming close to the time when he would assume a distinct nature and name, ready to enter his prime, to grow and flourish, to eat and to slide through his rightful prey, humanity. There were two paths laid before him. In one, he came into adulthood as a fae, wearing a mask of... but that path terminated in darkness. In the other, an angel with feet afire, or a demon with three faces, offered him the second path, one rarely taken by his kind. It was a path to the crown. To become strong enough, solid enough to overmaster the goblin horde, he would need to acquire a bit of human strength and vigor. An amulet—his amulet—was hung around his neck and he walked through the fire to become flesh, sacrificing part of his incandescent self. No longer a faelet, no longer between states, he was burned into one mold, bound into distinct shape and form.

Jareth's voice interrupted the narrative. "Goblins are not fae—they are strong and eternal as the earth, and they can't be won over by our power alone, which is all made of the strength of words and thoughts and creation. There's an ancient adulthood ritual a fae may undergo, a rite of passage that allows us to harness the physical strength and singular will of humanity. But it's like unto death. I knew if I could endure it, pay for it, that I'd receive something of equal worth in exchange. What I wanted was the Labyrinth."

She looked and saw. Air became earth. Light became flesh. A fixed body, a fixed perspective. She saw an owl wrapped up in the lengthy coils of a vile worm.

"Several… things happened to me, when I fell up to Earth. But there's only one thing that concerns you, Sarah. The serpent beguiled me, and I ate. And when you came to the Labyrinth, I tried to take out what the worm put into me, and put it into you. Just a touch of that humanity. 'Let her carry it away with her,' I thought. 'Let her go into the Fairy Ring with that inside her, let it all be devoured.' But all you took was a single taste, and the fruit wasn't pure. I had lived with my dual nature too long to separate out that part of myself cleanly. And so you've got a bit of my essence inside you."

"Is that why these dreams are so real?" she asked. She grabbed up the edge of his coat-tails and forced him to walk more slowly. "We _are_ dreaming, right?"

"We have a certain indisputable connection. You experience me very well. And when you've called me, dreaming of me, I've always been compelled to go and see you. I didn't always have the strength to refrain from taking what you offered. The sight of me, reflected in your eyes. The beating of your human heart, the scent of your desire…" His footsteps faltered, and he glanced over his shoulder quickly and then averted his gaze again. "Just a touch. Just a taste. I didn't want to hurt you. Our two races can too easily do harm to the other. I've tried… to show restraint."

Her eyes followed the story of the murals. That touch of humanity, that patina of mortal strength was enough to give the fae man, no longer young and no longer quite fae, the advantage over the goblin hordes. He fought with the combined strength of both races, fought many battles. He destroyed the smartest goblins, the most dangerous ones, and subdued the rest. He charmed them. He beguiled them. He made himself their King. And they drew the hair off his head and hacked it off with terrible scissors, and set him on the Throne of the Goblin King, which was also one of their cunning and cruel devices.

The throne was a cage for a wild bird. The goblins were foul and raucous, and when the Goblin King sat there, he forgot where he had come from. He was theirs. And like cruel and stupid people, they spoiled their king rotten, gave him his own way in everything, bent over backwards to serve him in all ways but the ones that would matter. Meanwhile, the Labyrinth, the very place he'd endured so much to attain, was left ignored, and began to slip into decay…until one day-

Sarah caught one glimpse of an owl observing a girl dressed all in white, carrying a red book. Her mother had given her the white dress, folded the fabric over her little-girl's body, but here she was a womanchild, and the dress was almost too small now.

"You were a creature on the edge. Not a girl, not a woman, and all full of inchoate desires and dreams. And calling out to me with my own words. How could I not watch you? How could I not look at you?"

"You wrote the Red Book? But I thought Jeremy wrote that play. For my mother." She swallowed hard.

"I didn't say I wrote it. I said my words were in it," he replied curtly. "I watched you often. It gave me a feeling-I won't say happiness-to hear those words again. I kept a window open on you. The goblins were interested in you because I was interested. And then you said the _right_ words, and wished your brother away. What was I to do? As the Goblin King, it was my obligation to let them take your little brother and eat him. Baby is a rare dish, rarely found in the Labyrinth. But I had another role I could take on. I could oversee a rite of passage for you. And that is precisely what I did."

He snuffed his firefly coat, and she was enfolded in absolute darkness. "And while I watched you in my Labyrinth, I rediscovered it after long years of neglect. Now you're here again. Do you believe in fate?"

"I believe in coincidence," she said carefully. "Destiny is something we make, not something that's already made. Believing in fate—that's the abdication of responsibility. Saying things are a certain way because of the Will of Heaven or because the Devil made us do it—it's a load. We're responsible for the fates we weave."

"And what fate did you weave?"

"I grew up," Sarah said. "I learned that you have to sacrifice absolutely everything if you really love someone. I chose Toby over you." _The exact opposite of my mother, who sacrificed me for Jeremy, for her career. I grew up the moment I understood why my choice was better. And you were there,_ _Jareth_.

He chuckled in the darkness. "So you don't believe in destiny, or in a higher power? Or in the gods? How adorable. I'll have to repeat this conversation to Shiva. He could use a good laugh."

She blinked. His voice was amused, but she wasn't sure if he was teasing her or not. "I only believe in what I can see!" she insisted.

"And what do you see?" he asked. She felt him reach out to her, and she took his hands, fumbling for them. They were warm hands, living hands, and she let him lead her slowly, and carefully, up several more steps, their footfalls echoing like the drumbeat of two hearts.

"I can't see you at all at the moment," she said bluntly. "But I'm willing to trust you." She stumbled again in the dark, and again he steadied her. "I trust you, Jareth."

"I'm a monster," he reminded her, chiding her with her own words. "Fae but not fae, mortal but not mortal. I always played the villain very well. Are you willing to trust a villain?"

"There's no reason to," Sarah said. "But…the reason I'm here. I didn't come to the Labyrinth because the goblins wanted me," she admitted. She had a lump in her throat. The dance in the Fairy Ring was nothing, nothing compared to this confession. "I came… for you." She held his hands tightly in hers. "I wanted to see you. I want to see you with my waking eyes. I don't believe you're a villain any more. Maybe you never were."

"Even after everything you've already seen?" he mused. "It's dangerous of you to put that much faith in me, Sarah. It's dangerous to have a heart. Dangerous to want. Wanting hurts." He really was inexorable—pulling her along in the dark when what she really wanted were some straight answers. "It's far better to have nothing."

"So why am I here this time? Why these tasks, why a door?"

She heard him sigh in the darkness. "I'm under a curse," he said quietly. "I set a pattern in motion the moment I decided to become the Goblin King. After you left, after some time, I wandered far out into my Kingdom, and I learned something dangerous, woke up an older magic than mine. I'm bound by the confines of this spell, and now the only magic I've left to use is what I can draw from your dreams. I am a prisoner until you come to set me free."

Her feet wobbled on the lip of a step and he steadied her. _Under a spell_, she thought. _And yet he seems so strong. He's strong because of me. Because I believe in him_. She felt fiercely glad that whatever he'd taken from her had at least not been wasted. She wanted to see his face now, wanted it so badly that at first she thought she was conjuring his face out of memory. But then she knew she was generating her own light, making her favour into a cold flame, making it glow pale and white.

"I want you," she said. "And I know you want me too. The connection goes both ways. It's not just about eating for you. You want me the way a man wants a woman. You want _me_."

"I mustn't," he said sadly. "I _do_ want you, Sarah. And I am ashamed of my monstrous selfishness."

"Please," she said. "Stop moving away from me." But he had come closer, so that they were sharing the same step. The light of her favour reflected the light of his coat, making him burn brighter.

"I'll hurt you," he whispered, but the words weren't the proud invitation of the Host of the Revels, they were a confession. "The fae have no hearts. They cannot love. This will end in tears. I should send you away from me. I should say no."

"Pain is the price of knowledge," she said. "Your words. I'm willing to be hurt, if that's what it takes to be with you." She wrapped her arms around him and rested her head against his breast. His skin felt feverish, twitching with tension. But he returned her embrace, holding her close to him, rubbing his cheek against her hair. His breath was perfume. She could feel his pulse racing, racing against hers. "Please," she said, tilting her face up to him. "Please, if you believe in fate, then you have to believe this was meant to be. Kiss me. Show me you want me back. Kiss me."

His coat brightened so that her pupils burned. She could see how his will was torn in two pieces, between desire and restraint. His talons stroked her face as gently as a man's might, with as little hurt. He was gentle, so gentle, and so cautious. She kept her eyes on him, devouring the sight of him. She wanted to see him.

"Yes," he said quietly.

He bent his face carefully to hers, and just touched her lips. It was a gentle kiss, a child's kiss, his lips innocent against hers. She heard him give a whisper-moan of fear, and then his mouth was firm against hers, demanding and hungry. She could feel appetites in that kiss, and felt his desire for her in all the lines of his body, the body she was melting against. He kissed her with sharp quick darts, like a bird pecking at crumbs. He tasted of raspberries and nicotine, and he was so hungry, so shy… "Yes," she murmured between the hard snaps of his lips against hers. His claws tapped against her scalp.

He breathed against her mouth, and then his tongue, sliding between her lips, was dancing with hers. His kiss burned. It burned and tingled, and she imagined that he was sucking out the taste of faerie champagne from her, drawing poison out of a wound, drinking her. _Drink with me_, she thought. _Drink me. I trust you. I want you, Jareth. I want you. I want you and no one else_. He was intoxicating to the senses. His hands were on her waist, and then against the curve of her ass, lifting her and pressing her against him. She could feel that core of heat sliding against her legs as she rose in his embrace, but it didn't disgust her, or threaten her. He smelled like desire. The perfume of him tickled her nose and her brain, until she was a censer of sweet incense, burning, burning for him.

It was Jareth who broke the kiss, gasping for breath. He turned his face aside, and she nuzzled against his beardless cheek, sampled his sweat and the drops of their mixed saliva, utterly without shame, without fear. And although he didn't look at her, he also didn't let her go. Those strong hands kept hold of her body as if they'd never let her go.

"There isn't much time," he said slowly, "Before we both wake. _If_ you wake, and regret this decision, you will completely and utterly ruin me." He looked at her again. His smile was sad. "I'm falling. Catch me up again. Kiss me again, Sarah. Kiss me until the light breaks. Tell me you'll come for me on feet like wings."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and took his mouth again. "Yes," she said. "Yes."

"Mortal woman, you'll be the death of me." And then there was only desire and the dark, and the taste of him upon her.

* * *

_Well? Squee?**_

_This chapter hurt to write. Jareth's so obscure, so inhuman, so contrary, so proud, and (let us admit hard truths) so spoiled that it's hard for me to make him give any exposition whatsoever. No doubt he found it difficult to reveal things about himself to Sarah. But… he did do it. He did do some major revealing. And now Sarah knows explicitly why she's in the Labyrinth: puzzlesolving and cursebreaking! And sorry, I can't be more specific yet about the exact nature of the curse—this story is in the "mystery" category for a reason. Keep reading and all things will be made plain in proper order.  
_

_**That kiss is a harbinger of things to come. And by "things" I mean an "M" rating for this story. Readers are humbly advised to Favorite and Follow this story now before it disappears from the default listings and into the lemon realm of "Mature."**  
_

_And speaking of terms and conditions, if you haven't left me a review yet, please do so. Reviews really brighten my day and make it worth the agony that is writing._

_**Anyone who hasn't yet needs to read the entirety of Pika-La-Cynique's "Girls Next Door" fancomic on DeviantArt. It's about what happens when Labyrinth's Sarah and Christine from Phantom of the Opera become college roommates—and learn that their respective not-boyfriend-stalkers have rented the apartment downstairs. I cribbed that line from Pika. She's the best._

_You know who's also the best? My beta! Nyllewell, take a bow._

_**Aleta**: Não, veja, ela acabou de fazer!  
**Fanny**: I have not yet begun to twist!. And EmoJareth's box is in the mail. Please check because I think I forgot to punch air-holes in the lid._  
_**Lilyflower20**: Hello there, lovely, pleased to meet you! More is here!_  
_**RosieLilyIce93**: I can never let things get too fluffy. Pain is the price of knowledge, after all._  
_**Honoria**: Mmmmhm. I knew he'd grow on you._  
_**BT**: Excellent question. I'll ask PocketJareth if he managed to kiss out any incidental poison. (whispered conference) He says it might be a good idea to kiss Sarah some more, just to be sure._  
_**Kaytori**: Yes, go Finnvah go. I hope this chapter answers some of your (excellent) questions._  
_**Thea**: Ahthankyou! Ahthankyou very much!_  
_**TheRealEatsShootsAndLeaves**: Here's your owl-pellet (with mystery prize inside). Well done._  
_**Guest**: I rewatched that video three times after you reminded me. You're right: "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" was an important influence on my understanding of fae nature. David Bowie just gives and gives._  
_**Jetredgirl**: Isn't it obvious? Jareth's the White Rabbit! Obsessed with his fan(girl) and gloves!_  
_**Linnoria**: I think they made up. What do you think?_  
_**irgroomer**: Education always changes people for the better, and Doctor-Philip-Channard was quite the education._

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**Next…Chapter 11: "The Pillars of the Underearth"**


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